th equal courage and resource.

Surgeons, nurses, priests, nuns, volunteer workers who substitute for
lack of training both courage and zeal, these are a part of the
machinery of mercy. There is another element--the boy scouts.

During the early days of the war the boy scouts of England, then on
school holiday, did marvellous work. Boys of fourteen made repeated
trips across the Channel, bringing back from France children,
invalids, timorous women. They volunteered in the hospitals, ran
errands, carried messages, were as useful as only willing boys can be.
They did scout service, too, guarding the railway lines and assisting
in watching the Channel coast; but with the end of the holiday most of
the English boy scouts were obliged to go back to school. Their
activities were not over, but they were largely curtailed.

There were five thousand boy scouts in Belgium at the beginning of the
war. I saw them everywhere--behind the battle lines, on the driving
seats of ambulances, at the doors of hospitals. They were very calm.
Because I know a good deal about small boys I smothered a riotous
impulse to hug them, and spoke to them as grown-up to grown-up. Thus
approached, they met my advances with dignity, but without excitement.

And after a time I learned something about them from the Chief Scout
of Belgium; perhaps it will show the boy scouts of America what they
will mean to the country in time of war. Perhaps it will make them
realise that being a scout is not, after all, only camping in the
woods, long hikes, games in the open. The long hikes fit a boy for
dispatch carrying, the camping teaches him to care for himself when,
if necessity arises, he is thrown on the country, like his older
brother, the fighting man.

A small cog, perhaps, in the machinery of mercy, but a necessary one.
A vital cog in the vast machinery of war--that is the boy scout
to-day.

The day after the declaration of war the Belgian scouts were
mobilised, by order of the minister of war--five thousand boys, then,
ranging in age from twelve to eighteen, an army of children. What a
sight they must have been! How many grown-ups can think of it with dry
eyes? What a terrible emergency was this, which must call the children
into battle!

They were placed at the service of the military authorities, to do any
and every kind of work. Some, with ordinary bicycles or motorcyles,
were made dispatch riders. The senior scouts were enlisted in the
regular