Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts Part 4

At home and in their club-rooms they have made bandages for the wounded, and warm clothing for the men at the Front and in the Fleet.

At home in many of the great cities the Guides have turned their Headquarters' Club-Rooms into "Hostels." That is, they have made them into small hospitals ready for taking in people injured in air-raids by the enemy.

So altogether the Guides have shown themselves to be a pretty useful lot in many different kinds of work during the war, and, mind you, they are only girls between the ages of 11 and 18. But they have done their bit in the Great War as far as they were able, and have done it well.

There are 100,000 of them, and they are very smart, and ready for any job that may be demanded of them.

They were not raised for this special work during the war for they began some years before it, but their motto is "Be Prepared," and it was their business to train themselves to be ready for anything that might happen, even the most unlikely thing.

So even when war came they were "all there" and ready for it.

It is not only in Great Britain that they have been doing this, but all over our great Empire--in Canada and Australia, West, East and South Africa, New Zealand, the Falkland Islands, West Indies, and India. The Guides are a vast sisterhood of girls, ready to do anything they can for their country and Empire.

Long before there was any idea of the war the Guides had been taught to think out and to practise what they should do supposing such a thing as war happened in their own country, or that people should get injured by bombs or by accidents in their neighborhood. Thousands of women have done splendid work in this war, but thousands more would have been able to do good work also had they only Been Prepared for it beforehand by learning a few things that are useful to them outside their mere school work or work in their own home. And that is what the Guides are learning in all their games and camp work: they mean to be useful in other ways besides what they are taught in school.

WHAT THE GUIDES DO

As a Guide your first duty is to be helpful to other people, both in small everyday matters and also under the worst of circ.u.mstances. You have to imagine to yourself what sort of things might possibly happen, and how you should deal with them when they occur. Then you will know what to do.

I was present when a German aeroplane dropped a bomb on to a railway station in London. There was the usual busy scene of people seeing to their luggage, saying good-bye and going off by train, when with a sudden bang a whole carriage was blown to bits, and the adjoining ones were in a blaze; seven or eight of those active in getting into the train were flung down--mangled and dead; while some thirty more were smashed, broken, and bleeding, but still alive. The suddenness of it made it all the more horrifying. But one of the first people I noticed as keeping her head was a smartly dressed young lady kneeling by an injured working-man; his thigh was smashed and bleeding terribly; she had ripped up his trousers with her knife, and with strips of it had bound a pad to the wound; she found a cup somehow and filled it with water for him from the overhead hose for filling engines. Instead of being hysterical and useless, she was as cool and ready to do the right thing as if she had been in bomb-raids every day of her life. Well, that is what any girl can do if she only prepares herself for it.

These are things which have to be learnt in peace-time, and because they were learnt by the Guides beforehand, these girls were able to do their bit so well when war came.

FIRST AID.

When you see an accident in the street or people injured in an air raid, the sight of the torn limbs, the blood, the broken bones, and the sound of the groans and sobbing all make you feel sick and horrified and anxious to get away from it--if you're not a Girl Guide. But that is cowardice: your business as a Guide is to steel yourself to face it and to help the poor victim. As a matter of fact, after a trial or two you really get to like such jobs, because with coolheadedness and knowledge of what to do you feel you give the much-needed help.

_The Value of Nursing._--In this war hundreds and hundreds of women have gone to act as nurses in the hospitals for the wounded and have done splendid work. They will no doubt be thankful all their lives that while they were yet girls they learnt how to nurse and how to do hospital work, so that they were useful when the call came for them. But there are thousands and thousands of others who wanted to do the work when the time came, but they had not like Guides, Been Prepared, and they had never learnt how to nurse, and so they were perfectly useless and their services were not required in the different hospitals. So carry out your motto and Be Prepared and learn all you can about hospital and child nursing, sick nursing, and every kind, while you are yet a Guide and have people ready to instruct you and to help you in learning.

In countries not so settled and protected as England and America, where the women and girls are taught to count upon their men to protect them in the field, the Girl Scouts have sometimes had to display a courage like that of the early settlers. A Roumanian Scout, Ecaterina Teodorroiu actually fought in the war and was taken prisoner. She escaped, traced her way back to her company, and brought valuable information as to the enemy's movements. For these services she was decorated "as a reward for devotion and conspicuous bravery" with the Order of Merit and a special gold medal of the Scouts, only given for services during the war. At the same time she was promoted to the rank of Honorary Second Lieutenant.

Can we wonder that she is known as the Joan of Arc of Roumania?

During the Russian Revolution the Girl Scouts were used by the Government in many practical ways, as may be seen from the following letter from one of them:

"The Scouts a.s.sisted from the beginning, from seven in the morning until twelve at night, carrying messages, sometimes containing state secrets, letters, etc., from the Duma to the different branches of it called commissariats, and back again. They also fed the soldiers that were on guard. The Scout uniform was our protection, and everywhere that uniform commanded the respect of the soldiers, peasants and workingmen.

"As great numbers of soldiers came from the front, food had to be given them. It was contributed by private people, but the Scouts had lots of work distributing it. All the little taverns were turned into eating houses for the soldiers, and there we helped to prepare the food and feed them.

As there were not enough Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts helped in the same way as the boys.

"The Scouts also did much First Aid work. In one instance I saw an officer whose finger had been shot off. I ran up to him and bandaged it up for him. (All of us Scouts had First Aid kits hanging from our belts.)

"It was something of a proud day for us Scouts when the Premier after a parade, called us all before the Duma and publicly thanked us for our aid."

Indeed it was and we heartily congratulate our Sister Scouts! But if we do our duty by our Patrol and the Patrols all do their duty by their Troop, that proud moment is going to come to every single Scout of us, when the town where we live tells us by its smiles and applause, when we go by in uniform, what it thinks of us.

We Scouts shall be more and more interested, as the years go on, to remember that in the great hours of one of the world's greatest crises we helped to make its history. Instances like these are very exceptional; they could not occur to one in ten thousand of us; but we stay-at-homes can always remind ourselves that it was the obedience, the quickness, and the skill learned in quiet, every-day Scouting that made these few rise to their opportunity when it came.

War and revolution do not make Scouts either brave or useful; they only bring out the bravery and the usefulness that have been learned, as we are all learning them, every day!

All we have to do is to fix Scout habits in our hearts and hands, and then when our Country calls us, we shall be as ready as these little Russian Scouts were.

In France the Scouts, known as the Eclaireuses, have agreed with us that the "land Army" is the best army for women. Rain or s.h.i.+ne, in heat and cold, they have dug and ploughed and planted, and learned the lesson American girls learned long ago--that team work is what counts!

A bit of one of their reports is translated here:

"The crops were fine--potatoes, radishes, greens and beans were raised. The crop of potatoes, especially, was so good that the Eclaireuses were able to supply their families with them at a price defying compet.i.tion, and they always had enough besides for their own use on excursions. (Our hikes.)

"Such has been the reward of the care, given so perseveringly and intelligently to the gardening.

"And what an admirable lesson! Not a minute was lost in this out-of-door work; chests and muscles filled out; and at the same time the girls learned to recognize weather signs; rain or sun were the factors which determined the success or non-success of the planting. And each day, there grew in them also love and grat.i.tude for the earth and its elements, without the a.s.sistance of which we could harvest nothing.

"Is this not the best method of preparing our youth to return to the land, to the healthy and safe life of the beautiful countryside of France; by showing them the interest and usefulness that lie in agricultural labor?

"So the Eclaireuse becomes a model of the new women, used to sport, possessing her First Aid Diploma, able to cook good simple meals, marching under orders, knowing how to obey, ready to accept her responsibility, good-natured and lively in rain or sun, in public or in her home.... They continue their courses in sewing, hygiene and gymnastics and a.s.sist eagerly at conferences arranged for them to discuss the duties of the Eclaireuses and what it is necessary to do to become a good Captain.

"To make themselves useful--that is the ideal of the Eclaireuses. They know that in order to do this it is becoming more and more necessary to acquire a broad and complete knowledge."

It is quite a feather in the cap of this great Scout Family of ours that we are teaching the French girl, who has not been accustomed to leave her home or to work in clubs or troops, what a jolly, wonder-working thing a crowd of girls, all forging ahead together, can be.

In our own country we were protected from the worst sides of the great war, but we had a wonderful opportunity to show how we could Be Prepared ourselves by seeing that our brave soldiers were prepared.

Our War Records show an immense amount of Red Cross supplies, knitting, comfort kits, food grown and conserved in every way, money raised for Liberty Loans and Thrift Stamps, war orphans adopted, home replacement work undertaken and carried through; all these to so great an amount that the country recognized our existence and services as never before in our history, the Government, indeed, employing sixty uniformed Scouts as messengers in the Surgeon General's Department.

Perhaps it is only the truth to say that the war showed our country what we could Be Prepared to do for her! And it showed us, too.

It has been said that women can never be the same after the great events of the last few years, and we must never forget that the Girl Scouts of today are the women of tomorrow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FLAG RAISING AT DAWN]

SECTION V

THE OUT-OF-DOOR SCOUT

Busy as the Girl Scout may be with learning to do in a clever, up-to-date way all the things to improve her home and town that the old pioneer girls knew how to do, she never forgets that the original Scouts were out-of-door people. So long as there are bandages to make or babies to bathe or meals to get or clothes to make, she does them all, quickly and cheerfully, and is very rightly proud of the badges she gets for having learned to do them all, and the sense of independence that comes from all this skill with her hands. It gives her a real glow of pleasure to feel that because of her First Aid practice she may be able to save a life some day, and that the hours of study she put in at her home nursing and invalid cooking may make her a valuable a.s.set to the community in case of any great disaster or epidemic; but the real fun of scouting lies in the great life of out-of-doors, and the call of the woods is answered quicker by the Scout than by anybody, because the Scout learns just how to get the most out of all this wild, free life and how to enjoy it with the least trouble and the most fun.

One of our most experienced and best loved Captains says that "a camp is as much a necessity for the Girl Scouts as an office headquarters," and more and more girls are learning to agree with her every year.

Our British cousins are the greatest lovers of out-of-door life in the world, and it is only natural that we should look to our Chief Scout to hear what he has to say to his Girl Guides on this subject so dear to his heart that he founded Scouting, that all boys and girls might share his enthusiastic pleasure in going back to Nature to study and to love her and to gain happiness and health from her woods and fields.

HOW CAMPING TEACHES THE GUIDE LAW