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On this Memorial Day we honor the memories and continuing dedication of women and men who have served our country. We must rememebr that when meet, when we camp, when we march in parades and decorate the graves of those who served, the great debt we owe.
Our remembrances today are one small payment on that debt, and our work in Scouting has the great potential to foster peace by educating our Scouts in a spirit of world brotherhood.
In 1922 Scouting’s founder, Robert Baden-Powell, addressed the International Congress of Moral Education, one of the forerunners of UNESCO. In his address B-P, a career military man, laid out his vision for worldwide Scouting as a catalyst for world peace.
We desire peace and so we prepare for war, fearing lest the enemy should attack us…
God is love. Therefore it is the reign of love that we all pray for. Yet we allow ourselves to live under the yoke of fear.
Can we not, in addition to passively praying for the reign of love, do something to actively help in bringing it about? I believe that we can. …
To effectively eradicate an evil it is necessary to substitute that which is good. To abolish the domination of fear we must put some equally potent influence in its place. If we apply love in place of fear … we gain peace between the nations through mutual trust, honor and goodwill. …
This may seem to many to be an Utopian dream too visionary for practical politics, and the question would naturally be asked: “Could it ever be brought about in practice”?
That question is already answered. The scheme is already in practice. Although as yet young the boy scout and girl guide movements … already constitute a recognized Brotherhood whose aim is the efficiency of the individual for the better service of others, i.e. citizenship of the highest quality. …
If such training be encouraged in all countries in such manner that the rising generation throughout the world feel themselves tangibly linked in Brotherhood, it is going to contribute markedly to the abolition of war and to the coming of that long-looked-for era of peace and goodwill among men.
– Baden-Powell 1922
Read the full text of Education in Love In Place of Fear (PDF) from the World Organization of the Scouting Movement.
