"Golden Hatchet"

"B. P." is the nationally-advertised trade mark of an Empire gasoline called "British Petrol." Also "B. P." is what Boy Scouts the world over call their jovial, snowy-whiskered Chief Scout, Baron Baden-Powell of Gilwell. Last week the 50,000 Scouts who have been attending an international "jamboree" (Scoutese for convention) at Birkenhead, England (TIME, Aug. 12) broke camp and prepared to disperse to their homes in 50 nations with a message from "B. P."*

In the soft, wet soil of Arrowe Park, Birkenhead, where Scout tents had been bogged for a fortnight, Baron/- Baden-Powell buried what he soon described as a golden hatchet. Next he handed round golden arrows, one to each national Scout leader. Finally beloved "B. P." cried in his rich, booming bass voice:

"From the northlands, southlands, eastlands and westlands you came at the call of my horn! I have buried this golden hatchet, the emblem of war, enmity and bad feeling. From now on the Scout symbol of peace is a golden arrow. I send you back to your homelands as ambassadors of peace!"

Though the arrow is exclusively a weapon, whereas the hatchet is primarily a tool, loyal Scouts raised a hearty cheer for "B. P.", saw him off in his new "Penny Rolls-Royce" (purchased from international Scout contributions of one penny each).

As tents were unbogged and struck, correspondents asked at Scout headquarters if a valuable golden hatchet was really going to be left buried in Arrowe Park. "It was only gilded wood," beamed a Scout official, "and I expect by now it's been dug up and split into souvenirs." Lay visitors to the Scout jamboree, he added, had totaled 314,422, believed to be a record.

Representative of many a letter received from the Scout Jamboree by U. S. parents was the following, written to Consulting Engineer A. Streiff of Jackson, Mich.

"Here I am at camp after visiting Oxford," wrote Scout John Fridolin Streiff to his parents. "After two months of drought we brought the rain, and how! . . . Yesterday, just as we went to parade past the Review Stand a storm hit us. Wet? We got soaked. The Duke of Connaught reviewed us. Boloney! Day before yesterday I was in the India Corps for lunch. Boiled brown rice from India. Boiled in olive oil Indian style. Good. Oh boy! . . .

"You should hear my high class English accent. Hot stuff. . . .

"For ordinary expenses, fruit, ginger, citron and so forth, I spend about 25c a day. Too much! But I am going to quit. . . . The food is not so good, so we chip in a shilling a day for--Oh! raisins in the boiled rice and so on. . . ."

* Closest intimates chaffingly call Baron Baden-Powell "Old Pig Sticker," recall that he is the author of Pig-Sticking or Hog-Hunting (1889) and Pig-Sticking (revised edition, 1924). In his youth he won the Kadir (Pigsticking) Cup, and in the British Who's Who he still lists pig-sticking first among his "recreations." Pigsticking, hunting Indian wild boar, is as formal a sport as British foxhunting. As members of a hunt club ride to hounds in silk hats, pink coats, so members of a "Tent [pigsticking] Club" ride to hog in sun helmets, are armed with six-foot, needle-sharp, bamboo-shafted lances. Native beaters drive the boars from cover. A good pig-sticker does not "stick" his prey--he holds his lance as motionless as possible, allows the speed of his horse to drive it into the hog.

/-Famed as "Sir Robert Baden-Powell" but gazetted a baron recently, he chose to be known as "Baron Baden-Powell of Gilwell" because since 1918 the old hunting lodge at Gilwell Park, Essex, has been his headquarters for training Scoutmasters recruited throughout the globe.