Stings
The best antidote for all stings is ammonia. You can remember this by the front letters of the alphabet: (A)mmonia for (B)ee sting. Baking soda is also good. Remove the stinger from a bee with a clean needle.
Suicides
Where a man has gone so far as to attempt suicide, a Scout should know what to do with him.
In the case of a man cutting his throat, the point is to stop the bleeding from the artery, if it is cut. The artery runs from where the collar-bone and breast-bone join up, to the corner of the jaw, and the way to stop bleeding is to press hard with the thumb on the side of the wound nearest to the heart, and to keep up the pressure until assistance arrives.
In a case where the would-be suicide has taken poison, give him first aid for poison (see above).
In the case of hanging, cut down the person at once, taking care to support him with one arm while cutting the cord. Cut the noose, loosen all tight clothing about the neck and chest. Let the patient have as much fresh air as possible, throw cold water on the face and chest, or cold and hot water alternately. Perform artificial respiration, as in the case of apparently drowned people.
A Tenderfoot is sometimes inclined to be timid about handling an insensible man or a dead man, or even of seeing blood. Well, he won’t be much use till he gets over such nonsense. The poor insensible fellow can’t hurt him, and he must force himself to catch hold of himself. When once he has done this his fears will pass off.
How to Carry a Patient
A four-handed seat can be made by two Scouts each grasping his own left wrist with his right hand and in the same way grasping the right wrist of the other Scout with his left hand. If a back is required a three-handed seat is made in much the same way, except that one Scout makes a back by grasping the shoulder of the other. Stretchers may be arranged in some of the following ways:
(a) A door, gate, covered well with straw, hay, clothing, sacking.
(b) A piece of carpet, blanket, sacking, tarpaulin, spread out, and two stout poles rolled up in the sides. Put clothes for a pillow.
(c) Two coats, with the sleeves turned inside out. Pass two poles through the sleeves; button the coats over them.
(d) Two poles passed through a couple of sacks, through holes at the bottom corners of each.
In carrying a patient on a stretcher be careful that he is made quite comfortable before you start. Let both bearers rise together; they must walk out of step and take short paces. It should be the duty of the hinder bearer to keep a careful watch on the patient.
If the poles are short, four bearers will be necessary, one at each corner of the stretcher.
PATROL PRACTICES IN FIRST AID
Training in first aid should be very thorough as the public expects much of Scouts.
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Arrange surprise “accidents” during Patrol or Troop meetings, and let different Scouts take charge.
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Introduce at odd moments such practices as: improvised stretchers, four—handed seat, artificial respiration, making splints for an injured limb.
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GAMES IN FIRST AID
Missionaries
Each Scout in turn acts as an explorer or missionary, with a few simple remedies. Three patients are brought to him in succession to be treated, each having a different disease or injury. He has to advise or show what treatment should be carried out.
Wounded Prisoners
Placed at various points, each fifty yards from camp, are prisoners one for each competitor in the game. These prisoners have a tag, describing an injury, attached to their shirts.
At a signal each of the competitors has to make for a prisoner, give him first aid for his injury and bring him home. The one who reaches camp first with a prisoner properly cared for, wins.
Displays
Life-saving displays are very popular both with performers and with the audience.
Bicycle Accident—Boys returning from camp. A rash cyclist. Misfortune. Injuries attended to and patients carried away to hospital on improvised stretchers.
Gas Explosion—Mrs. Coddles and family take a walk. On her way home, Mrs. Coddles meets a friend. Maria is sent on to light the gas stove and prepare father’s tea. Father gets back from work and finds the house full of gas. Ambulance squad comes to the rescue. Maria is dragged out and given artificial respiration. Constable Ado arrives on the scene. How not to look for a gas escape. Sad end of a gallant but thoughtless policeman.
Fire Display—Evening at No. 5 Suburbi Villas. Fire alarm. Inmates aroused. Fence formed to keep back the crowd. Arrival of fire section with jumping-sheet. Life-lines and ladders. Rescue of remaining occupants.
Factory Fire—The workmen are engaged in their daily occupation when an explosion occurs, causing a fire inside the building and an exterior wall to collapse, which injures a man who happens to be passing at the time. The uninjured workmen attend to their unfortunate comrades, while others rush off for help and return with the ambulance and fire apparatus. Some of the men are rescued from the burning building by jumping from the tower into carpet.
CHAPTER IX
OUR DUTIES AS CITIZENS
CAMP FIRE YARN NO. 26
CITIZENSHIP
Duties of Scouts as Citizens - Citizens of the World
Every scout ought to prepare himself to be a good citizen of his country and of the World.
For this you must begin, as boys, to look on all boys as your friends. Remember, whether rich or poor, from town or from country, you have to stand shoulder to shoulder for your country. If you are divided among yourselves you are doing harm to your country. You must sink your differences.
If you despise other boys because they belong to a poorer home than yourself you are a snob. If you hate other boys because they happen to be born richer than you, you are a fool.
We must, each one of us, take our place as we find it in this world and make the best of it, and pull together with the others around us.
We are very much like bricks in a wall, we each have our place, though it may seem a small one in so big a wall. But if one brick crumbles or slips out of place, it begins to throw an undue strain on others, cracks appear, and the wall totters.
Don’t be too anxious to push yourself on. You will get disappointments without end if you start that way.
Work for the good of your country, or of the business in which you are employed, and you will find that as you do this you will be getting all the promotion and all the success that you want.
Try and prepare yourself for this by seriously taking up the subjects they teach you at school, not because it amuses you, but because it is your duty to your country to improve yourself. Take up your mathematics, your history, and your language learning in that spirit, and you’ll get on.
Don’t think of yourself, but think of your country and the good that your work is going to do to other people.
When You Grow Up
Then, when you grow up, you will become a voter and have a share in governing your country.
And you will, many of you, be inclined to belong automatically to the political party your father or friends belong to. I should not, if I were you. I should hear what each party has to say. If you listen to one party you will certainly agree that that is the only right one, the rest must all be wrong. But if you go and listen to another you may find that after all that one is quite right, and the first one wrong.
The elephants of Burma can teach a lesson to the nations of the world. By working together they can carry their heaviest load.
The thing is to listen to them all, and don’t be persuaded by any particular one. And then be a man, make up your mind and decide for yourself which you think is best for the whole country—not for some little local question— and vote for that one so long as it works the right way, namely, for the good of the country.
Many people get led away by some new politician with some new extreme idea. Never believe in one man’s idea til
l it has been well considered from all points of view. Extreme ideas are seldom much good; if you look them up in history you will see almost always that they have been tried before somewhere and have failed.
Your forefathers worked hard, fought hard, and died hard, to make your country for you. Don’t let them look down from heaven and see you loafing about with your hands in your pockets, doing nothing to keep it up.
Play up! Each man in his place, and play the game!
“A Friend of All the World”
Remember, too, that a Scout is not only a friend to the people round him, but “a friend of all the world.” Friends don’t fight each other. If we make friends with our neighbours across the sea in foreign countries, and if they keep friends with us, we shan’t want to fight. And that is by far the best way of preventing future wars and of making sure of lasting peace.
One thing which brings about wars is the fact that people of the different countries know very little about each other personally, but are told by their governments that the right thing is to fight. So they fight and are all jolly sorry for it afterwards.
If they had been good friends in peace time they would have understood each other better and would never have come to blows.
Nowadays travelling has become so much easier and distances have become so much smaller through motor transport, aeroplanes, and radio that people of different countries have a better chance of getting to know each other more closely.
Then the Boy Scout and Girl Guide (Girl Scout) Movements have spread among the nations. As Scouts we can visit about fifty different countries about the world and find Brother Scouts in each of them, all acting under the same Law and Promise and doing the same Scout work as ourselves. Already thousands of Scouts of different nations are making trips to each other’s countries regularly to interchange visits. In this way they have the fun of seeing what other countries are like, and what is more important, they are getting to know one another as friends and not as mere “foreigners.”
The World Brotherhood of Scouting
As a Scout you join a great host of boys of many nationalities and you will have friends in every continent.
This Brotherhood of Scouting is in many respects similar to a Crusade. Scouts from all parts of the world are ambassadors of good will, making friends, breaking down barriers of color, of creed, and of class. That surely is a great Crusade. I advise you to do your best in that work, for soon you will be a man, and if quarrels should arise between any nations it is upon you that the burden of responsibility will fall.
The Scout Movement is a world-wide brotherhood. You may have a chance some time, at a Jamboree, to meet Scouts from many nations.
Wars have taught us that if one nation tries to impose its particular will upon others, cruel reaction is bound to follow. A series of Scout World Jamborees and other meetings of Scouts from many countries has taught us that if we exercise mutual forbearance and give-and-take, then there is sympathy and harmony. These Jamborees have showed what a firm link the Scout Law is between boys of all nations. We can camp together, go hiking together, and enjoy all the fun of outdoor life, and so help to forge a chain of friendship.
If we are friends we will not want to be in dispute, and by cultivating these friendships such as have been cemented at our great Jamborees, we are preparing the way for solutions of international problems by discussion of a peaceful character. This will have a vital and very far- reaching effect throughout the world in the cause of peace. Therefore, let us pledge ourselves to do our absolute utmost to establish friendship among Scouts of all nations and to help to develop peace and happiness in the world and good will among men.
In all of this, it is the spirit that matters. Our Scout Law and Promise, when we really put them into practice, take away all occasion for wars and strife between nations.
Do Your Part
So let us all do our part. Those who are Scouts now should determine to be better Scouts, not only in backwoodsmanship and camping, but in sticking to the Law and carrying it out. If you are not a Scout, come along and join this happy Brotherhood. There are great times ahead, and we shall need you!
Make a special effort to study the work of the United Nations, its work for peace, its efforts to improve the lot of the world’s underprivileged peoples, its endeavours to form a real “World Brotherhood”.
Finally
I hope I have been able in this book to show you something of the appeal that lies in Scouting for all of us.
I want you to feel that you are really Scouts out in the wilds, able to work things out for yourselves, and not just Scouts in a Troop carefully looked after by Patrol Leaders and Scouters.
I know that you want to be up and doing things for yourselves; that these old explorers and frontiersmen appeal to the spirit of adventure in you; that, despite all the modern inventions, you want to get out on your own, fending for yourselves, enjoying the freedom of the open air.
I have just tried to suggest to you some ways of doing this and of helping you to become real men.
Scouting is a fine game, if we put our backs into it and tackle it well, with real enthusiasm. As with other games, too, we will find that we gain strength of body, mind, and spirit from the playing of it. But remember! it is a game for the open air, so whenever the opportunity occurs get out into the open and Good Luck and Good Camping go with you!
THE END
CAMP FIRE YARN No. 27
OUR COMMONWEALTH AND EMPIRE
Shopping for mother may seem at times rather dull, but if you keep your eyes open it can be quite a romantic tour of the Empire. Here is a list of some things and where they come from: oranges from South Africa, pineapples from Malaya, bananas from Jamaica, sugar from the West Indies or Mauritius, cocoa from Trinidad or West Africa, tea from Ceylon, India or Pakistan, coffee from Kenya, or grapefruit from Britis h Honduras.
Do you know where all those places are? Look them up on the map and you will find that they are all Britis h, and they are scattered all over the world. The distances alone are remarkable.
Any of you who have travelled much about this country by train, going for your holidays, and so on, know how two or three hours will take you a good long distance, and six or eight hours will take you to the other end of England.
Well, if instead of hours you travelled for as many days, even six or eight days would take you a very little way over our Commonwealth and Empire. It would get you into Canada, but you would want several more days—not hours—to get you across that country. Eighteen days’ hard travelling day and night would get you to India or South Africa, but either of these are little more than half-way to Australia. And all that distance off, across the seas, on the other side of the world, we have a British Country, Australia, into which you could put thirty-one United Kingdoms.
Of course, in an aeroplane all these times could be cut down considerably.
Nations of the Commonw ealth
The British Countries vary in size and population. Thus India and Pakistan together have an area of 862,599 square miles and a population of over 250 millions (England and Wales and Scotland together have an area of about 89,000 square miles and a population of 45 millions). Then at the other extreme is Ascension with an area of 38 square miles and 200 inhabitants!
They vary, too, in the way in which they are governed. First come the great Nations of the Commonwealth with their own Parliaments. They are so completely under their own management that each declared for itself the accession of King George VI to the throne; they didn’t even do it all on the same day! When war broke out in 1939, each Dominion decided for itself if it would declare war on Germany. Again these declarations did not come on the same day, the best proof, if proof were needed,
that these nations do govern themselves and are not told what to do by the Parliament at Westminster.
The Nations of the Commonwealth are the following:—
Canada.
Australia.
New Zealand.
India.
Pakistan.
Ceylon.
The Colonial Empire
In addition to the Nations of the Commonwealth there are many other British countries which do not entirely govern themselves; how far they do so depends on many things—for instance, the stage of education reached by the inhabitants. But all of them—and this is the point to remember—are on the way to self-government. Some are further on the road than others, but all will sooner or later take charge of their own affairs.
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