[英文] 貝登堡勳爵健康秘訣　總領袖生日訪談

LORD BADEN-POWELL'S HEALTH SECRET.

A BIRTHDAY TALK WITH THE CHIEF SCOUT.

MORNING WALKS AND MODERATION IN DIET KEEP "B.-P." FIT.

BY SHAW DESMOND.

A bare room. A clear desk. A picture or two on the distempered walls. The atmosphere of the strenuous life.

On the other side of the desk a fresh-faced, keen-eyed man, quietly genial, a figure with all the fitness of the 11-stone "B.-P." in the "Vanity Fair" print downstairs of the time of the Boer War, showing the hard, sinewy figure in the "pancake-slouch" standing between Kitchener and Plumer and Hillyer and French - then comparatively young men.

Still the same "B.-P.," who for thirty years has held the admiration of the Anglo-Saxon world and, as Chief Scout, the respect and affection of many countries outside that world. All the world knows B.-P. the Scout. I wanted it to know a little of B.-P. the man.

I am always interested in the different methods that people adopt to keep fit, so I told the Chief Scout that my method was to go round the Horn on a windjammer - combined with ju-jitsu. What, I asked, was his prescription?

I expected to hear of something fairly strenuous, but I learned that Lord Baden-Powell to-day relies on a morning walk of a mile or so. This, he confided to me with a twinkle, "happens to end at a certain pub, according to my friends."

MODERATION IN ALL THINGS.

Care in eating and drinking helps to keep the Chief Scout fit.

"I am nearly a vegetarian," he said. "Not on principle, but because I have no special liking for meat.

"I don't smoke, and although I am not a teetotaller, I take little more than a very occasional glass of wine or whisky.

"What do I think of the modern boy? That is a big question and not easy to answer off-hand. There are all sorts of influences at work to standardise him and reduce him to type. We are living in an age of mass standardisation.

"That applies chiefly to grown-ups, but even youth is coming under its influence. It is an influence that destroys initiative and freedom of thought, and, if persisted in, may have disastrous effects upon the race. It is, in fact, a tendency to which a movement like the Boy Scouts tends to act as an antidote.

THE MODERN BOY.

This led us to talk of a comparison between the boy of to-day and his father when a boy. I asked Lord Baden-Powell how he thought the boy of to-day differed from the boy of his youth.

"Well, for one thing," he replied, "it is evident that the boys born since the war are of a much more nervous type than their fathers at their age. This nervousness has reached such a point that in one public school which I know a woman has been appointed specially to look after subjects of 'nerves.'

"Another difference is that modern boys have not the sense of romance of their fathers and grandfathers. You seldom hear to-day, for example, of a boy wanting to run away to sea!"

A twinkle had crept into the keen eye.

"Modern boys, too, are less emotional. They are not moved by the same things that moved their fathers. In a way, they are more inaccessible.

"There is another side to modern youth which causes more apprehension - the chase after pleasure. This hunt seems at times almost universal. I noticed it in Australia when I was there.

"Boys and girls of our day, I sometimes think, are losing not only the taste but the capacity for work, and thinking far more of their pleasure than their work. This leads to self-indulgence in forms never even contemplated by previous generations."

I could see that this phase had troubled Lord Baden-Powell. We went on to discuss the modern boy's reaction to religion.

"I believe, despite all I have said, that the boy of to-day is religious," the Chief Scout declared with emphasis.

"I will even say that he is as religious as his father was, but his religion takes a different form. It is not, for one thing, so 'churchy.' It is less a religion of form than of spirit."

"Then you do think," I asked, "that the boy of our day is really as good as his father?"

"How can one help thinking so when one comes into close contact with thousands of boys, as we do in the Boy Scouts?

"I, who am always thinking of these boys of mine, find it significant that in these days of financial depression boys are finding the money to visit other Boy Scouts in different parts of the world. It shows a desire to know and to experience. It shows a practical idealism."

INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING.

"Not long ago I attended the first world Rover Scout moot of boys from eleven parts of the Empire and 23 of the 45 countries which have adopted the movement. This was held at Kandersteg, in Switzerland. At that 'moot' we expected perhaps 300 boys. Actually we got 3000, and feared that we could not provide accommodation for them."

I suggested that many regarded the Boy Scouts movement as one of the best peace-making mediums in the world, and I recalled his own address at Kandersteg in which he had said: "We old'uns leave you a legacy of war. War was made by men, not by God, and the cure for it must be made by men, too."

His reply was encouraging. "When boys of differing races and civilisations have got to the point, as our scouts did in Switzerland, of chaffing one another about their respective countries, we have accomplished something which even the diplomat at times fails to secure. Mutual understanding is the best road to peace."

I put a final question to Lord Baden-Powell about the future of the Empire.

"I have been astonished," he declared, "at the interest shown in the Empire wherever I have travelled. The Empire is a going concern - but not in the sense that its enemies wish."

資料：

1. 中華民國21年3月24日（星期四）《孖剌西報》第1頁、第2頁

   • 壬申年二月十八日

   • 公元1932年3月24日（星期四）