and Moller, Assistant Commissioners, and Whitcher of the Wolf Cubs, Mr. Cyril Champkin, manager of the P. & O. Bank, said in part:
This is my first attendance at Rotary Club Tiffin though I may claim to be one of the original members of the movement in Hongkong] when it was established there some ten years ago.
T confess that in those early days T had a rather dim idea as to what the Rotary Club concerned itself with, At one time T suspected it indulging in some form of rhythmic dancing in circles, but the real reason I have not been a regular attendant at these very pleasant. tiffins is that I contracted, early in life, the morose habit of reading at meals and however conducive this habit may be toward the acquisition of odds and ends of perfectly useless information there can be no question that it does lead inevitably to some! feeling of pessimists, with regard! to food, So it is that, having now arrived age that, in others, might perhaps be called the age of diserefion, 1 still find myself quite unable to conceive that " cruet-stand can possibly full a mote useful function than that of acting as a prop to a newspaper—unless course it happens to be nickel-plated, when it does possess rather obvious potentialities as a wedding resent to one's friends, Essentially Human and Joyous You will therefore readily understand that having shut myself off from my kind by indulging in this unfortunate habit of reading! at meals and having observed in myself the deplorable results of shunning the society of those who would create a new heaven and new earth over a porterhouse steak and a cup of coffee, it was perfectly natural that 1 shgyJd plunge with' enthusiasm into such essentially human and joyous organization as the Boy Scout Movement.
Thave never regretted my connex-fon with it, It has been a never-ending. source of interest to me. Daring the wet weather I frequently, sit for hours in an easy chair with my feet on the mantelpiece and Tisten to the downpour outside and wish that Thad my youth again that I might camp out in the jolly old refreshing rain! Many a time having toyed with an ortolan on toast, T have read out to these! splendid Inds perfectly reliable re-cipos for Hashed Mutton and Irish Stew and bitterly regretted the lost opportunities of my wasted childhood.
There are now nearly two million! Boy Scouts in the world and I wish Thad time to tell you of all the useful things they know. I wish I could tell you how feel in the presence of the average Boy Scout. I feel that if T had his varied knowledge I might have done something, wa fal into Instead of managing a bank, and certain i that all banks" would be better banks if all bank managers _subseribed heavily to the Boy Scouts Association.
Mr. Lloyd George once said "You yy. can't make an A-l nation from C-3 men" but Potash & Perlmutter, or some other philosophers have put it on record that "You can make an A-1 man from a 3-ft Scout" and that is what we are trying to do, That, in fact, is the whole aint: of the Boy Scout Movement—to turn out A-I men.
We rejoice in the position the movement now occupies in Shanghai. We have every confidence in what} it will do for China and the Far} East," We are not afflicted with any mock modesty. We are proud of what-we have achieved. We! believe with old Ecclesiastes that "there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works for he will not see those things that come after him!" but the dominant note in our movement is not pride in the past, not satisfaction in the present, but hope in the future that is hidden from I have seen much of what this movement has accomplished among all nationalities, native and foreign, throughout the East from Bombay to Yokohama and I say with confidence that there is no social movement in existence in the world to-day that is doing more lasting good than the Boy Scout Movement or that possesses greater: possibilities as a buttress against, Bolshevism and other evil tendencies of this age, whether they be politic or whether they be social, Ours is 4 revolutionary movement) but we ourselves are not revolution.
We are in this movement not, we have lost hope in our} present leaders but because we have a larger hope in the hardihood, humour, the wisdom and the ki lines of youth, and more especially its humour and kindliness. We are Scouts because we have faith ju the future, and because we believe that the great, human problems that ¢onfront and confound this present generation will yet be solve ed by the generation that is to come, and that they will be solved not by] the ways of war but by the ways of peace.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.