Janie Hampton - How the Girl Guides Won the War

Once the Pax Ting camp was set up, all the Guides were led by a Hungarian army band on a parade through the local town. They then spent the fortnight occupied by the usual camping activities such as constructing drying-up stands with sticks and fancy knots, collecting firewood, cooking dampers (a kind of doughy bread made from flour and water) and singing around the campfire before going to bed. The Hungarian Guides had laid on a programme which included ‘Move in open air; an excursion by steamer to Esztergom; and Funny Evening in the English Garden (not obligatory)’.

The theme of Pax Ting, suggested before the camp started by the British Guides, was ‘How can Guides help towards world peace?’, and it was decided that English should be adopted as their ‘agreed international language’. The host was Prince Horthy Miklos, Regent of Hungary, who rode to the camp on his horse. The aristocracy of Hungary were out in force: the Patroness of the Hungarian Girl Guides was the Archduchess Anna, daughter-in-law of the last Austro-Hungarian Emperor. Antonia Lindenmyer, President of the Hungarian Girl Guides and Chief of Pax Ting, was accompanied by the formidable Zimmermann Rozsi, Chief Secretary of the Hungarian Guides. Count Paul Telki, Prime Minister of Hungary and Chief Scout of Hungary, also came to sing round the campfire. Her Royal Highness Princess Sybilla of Sweden, great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, was there too, eating roast cobs and slices of watermelon. Princess Ileana, daughter of the King of Romania, whose full title was ‘Her Imperial and Royal Highness, The Illustrious Ileana, Archduchess of Austria, Princess Imperial of Austria’, had been Chief of the Romanian Guides. After marrying the Archduke of Austria she became President of the Austrian Girl Guides, which had recently been banned by the Nazis, but she had come anyway. Lord Baden-Powell, now aged eighty-two, sent greetings from his home in Kenya. The Royal Hungarian Post designed ‘a fine collection of stempis’ to commemorate the occasion.

At the end of the camp, every Guide received a certificate signed by Lindenmyer, saying, ‘We believe that the Spirit of Guiding so splendidly manifested during the Pax Ting will bear its fruits for the common good of the world in time to come.’

A growl of thunder sounded menacingly as the trumpets called out on the last evening. As the Guides all said goodbye to each other on the following wet, stormy morning at the end of August, they must have wondered how long it would be before they would meet again. What might happen to the tall, fair-haired Guides in grey uniforms, strapping sixty-pound packs on their backs as if they were light haversacks? What would happen to the little round-faced Dutch Guide who came squelching through the rain to exchange an address with a Scottish Patrol Leader? ‘Surely,’ wrote Catherine Christian, editor of The Guide , ‘grown-ups were not going to be so crazy as to start a war, when people all over the world were so willing to be friendly, to discuss things, to be interested in each other?’

The British Guides sped home through Germany, waving to the uniformed BDM girls on railway station platforms. After three days of hot and sticky travelling, they walked into their headquarters in Buckingham Palace Road on a hot August evening. ‘They had sampled a lot of other nations’ queer cooking,’ wrote Christian, ‘and emphatically preferred their own. They all had noticed how the stormy gleam of sunset had struck across the World Flag that last night and how the trumpets had sounded. They couldn’t explain it; but they had noticed.’

In 1934, Guiders, leaders of Guide companies in Wetherby, Yorkshire, had written to Lady Baden-Powell asking her what they and their Guides should do if war broke out again. She replied:

Dear Guiders,

It is practically impossible for anyone to decide now ‘What we would do if England went to war’. Our whole thought and work should be directed into the prevention of such a thing, and I feel too much of this discussion of war and its horrors leads people to THINK about it too much, and thus to become what has been called ‘war minded’.

Should it ever come about that England does go to war again it would be none of OUR MAKING. This is far more difficult for MEN to consider. But for women there are always the all important matters and ways in which they can serve humanity — in peace and war — i.e. nursing, caring for children, alleviating suffering of all kinds, food production, and so on.

I also hope, MOST devoutly, that there will never come a time when you will have to face the question in earnest!. Good wishes to you, and your Brownies,

Olave Baden-Powell

On 3 September, a perfect Sunday morning, Guides all over Britain listened with their families to the wireless as the tired voice of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain spoke to the nation: ‘This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note…’

Thirty years before Pax Ting, in 1909, there were no Guides, only a few intrepid girls who had begun to discover the excitement of the Scouting movement, which had been started that year by the distinguished Boer War hero and former spy, Robert Baden-Powell.

Conscripting soldiers for the Anglo-Boer War had revealed the poor state of health of the youth of Britain, a weakness which was interpreted by doctors, eugenicists and psychologists as both physical and moral. They decided that the country was in a state of decline, and desperately needed to be regenerated and revitalised. Foreign elements, homosexuality, mental instability and female hysterics — all had to be weeded out. Popular opinion was crying out for another war to ‘cleanse’ Britain of its social ills and weakness.

Robert Baden-Powell had been brought up with the self-discipline of ‘Christian Socialism’. ‘You must try very hard to be good,’ he had written at eight years old. He was a good shot, a brilliant tracker and a talented artist. Posing as a harmless tourist he could sketch a town plan, or the outline of a fort with gun emplacements, and then disguise it as a butterfly. He was a man of energy and efficiency who wanted to ensure that boys lived more fruitful lives. He believed that in order to prevent them hanging around on street corners and getting up to mischief, their aimlessness had to be replaced with a sense of ‘fun and excitement’. In 1907, when he was already fifty years old, Baden-Powell tried out his ideas at a camp on Brownsea Island, Dorset. A mixture of private- and state-educated boys slept in bell tents, cooked over a campfire and practised woodcraft, stalking and tracking, all of which were designed to teach them new skills. When a year later Baden-Powell’s book Scouting for Boys was published in six parts at fourpence each, it was a best-seller. The book was intended merely to offer new ideas gleaned from his life as a soldier and from the Brownsea Island camp to existing youth leaders. Baden-Powell was surprised by the reaction: immediately, thousands of boys asked how they could become Scouts or started their own groups. He had unwittingly spawned a whole new youth movement.

Unknown to Baden-Powell, by 1909 girls were forming their own Scout troops in several parts of the country, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Clacton-on-Sea. They too had read Scouting for Boys , and in response they formed patrols and marched around with staves and lanyards, their haversacks filled with bandages in case they came upon an injured person. They cobbled together their own uniforms: Miss Elise Lee, the first Girl Scout in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, wore a Boy Scout hat and her own blouse. Winnie Mason of Southsea, Hampshire, wore a Boy Scout shirt and scarf, a long straight skirt and lace-up boots, and carried a staff. The first Mayfair Group, formed by three sisters, Eleanor, Laura and Jean Trotter, wore serge skirts just below the knee, navy jerseys and shiny leather belts. In Scotland, Girl Scouts wore kilts and woollen jerseys. The thirty Gillingham Girl Scouts in Kent went on cycle outings in their uniforms in 1909. These early Girl Scouts even managed to obtain badges from Scout headquarters by indicating that they had achieved the desired standard in tests, and only giving their initials rather than their full Christian names. It was some time before the Boy Scouts noticed, and then demanded the return of the badges.