ile only boys can have a very real
effect upon the conduct of the grown up members of the community, for
decency and square dealing are just as contagious as vice and
corruption.

Every healthy boy ought to feel and will feel that in order to amount
to anything, it is necessary to have a constructive, {355} and not
merely a destructive, nature; and if he can keep this feeling as he
grows up he has taken his first step toward good citizenship. The man
who tears down and criticises and scolds may be a good citizen, but
only in a negative sense; and if he never does anything else he is apt
not to be a good citizen at all. The man who counts, and the boy who
counts, are the man and boy who steadily endeavor to build up, to
improve, to better living conditions everywhere and all about them.

But the boy can do an immense amount right in the present, entirely
aside from training himself to be a good citizen in the future; and he
can only do this if he associates himself with other boys. Let the boy
scouts see to it that the best use is made of the parks and
playgrounds in their villages and home towns. A gang of toughs may
make a playground impossible; and if the boy scouts in the
neighborhood of that particular playground are fit for their work,
they will show that they won't permit any such gang of toughs to have
its way. Moreover, let the boy scouts take the lead in seeing that the
parks and playgrounds are turned to a really good account. I hope, by
the way, that one of the prime teachings among the boy scouts will be
the teaching against vandalism. Let it be a point of honor to protect
birds, trees and flowers, and so to make our country more beautiful
and not more ugly, because we have lived in it.

The same qualities that mean success or failure to the nation as a
whole, mean success or failure in men and boys individually. The boy
scouts must war against the same foes and vices that most hurt the
nation; and they must try to develop the same virtues that the nation
most needs. To be helpless, self-indulgent, or wasteful, will turn the
boy into a mighty poor kind of a man, just as the indulgence in such
vices by the men of a nation means the ruin of the nation. Let the boy
stand stoutly against his enemies both from without and from within,
let him show courage in confronting fearlessly one set of enemies, and
in controlling and mastering the others. Any boy is worth nothing if
he has not got courage, courage to sta