Doors (1963)
Have you ever walked down a street and looked at the doors, wondering what lies behind them? Your thoughts have run riot, as you've looked at the neat and tidy doors with new paint on - the dingy doors - the doors with the newly scoured doorstep. Studying doors makes quite a fascinating subject. There are the plutocratic double doors, the doors with brass knockers and so on. On many nights in the week all those different sorts of doors open, and out steps, or skips, according to age and temperament, a figure in uniform, shorts, shirt and scarf - the distinctive uniform of the boy scout. Right from the word 'go' boy scouts have stepped out of those different doors, to go scouting - even when Lord Baden-Powell tried his first experiment of scouting on Brownsea Island, he drew half his boys from the public school and half from the other end of the social scale. And amusingly enough, even today at a scout meeting, it is often the boy from the upper strata of society who looks "scruffier" in his uniform than the other boy! Uniform is a great leveller!
Scouting opens many doors you know. It opens the door to every country in the world, although it hasn't managed to open iron curtains yet! But in all those other countries, the doors open and off go the boys to their scout meeting (not to mention cub pack meetings and Rover Crew meetings too).
And doors are open to Scouting too. Many Scout troops are sponsored by religious organisations, and we have our Methodist Groups, our Congregational Groups, our Roman Catholic and Anglican Groups in Chester, besides the open Groups. And all these denominations open their doors to Scouting because, through its ideals of 'Duty to God' it is acceptable to them as a suitable form of training for citizenship of their young people.
Very often, the doors of our Troop rooms are open to visitors, the mums and the dads and their friends. We like them to see what sort of training we are giving their boys - but often we are disappointed that more do not turn up. When you read this, remember that will you, and drop in on your local scout troop on its meeting night. You would be made very welcome. You might, of course, be given a job to do, particularly if you are skilled in some sort of craft or pastime, which is almost bound to be covered by our badge system.
Those doors that open to scouting lead to adventure too. This year three of our boys went to Greece to the World Jamboree at Marathon. Others went to visit Andora. All this world travel plus the Scout training, equip a boy for his working days, for they are education in the fullest sense of the word, and in this day of keen competition for jobs, most employers react favourably to the boy who can show a good record of Scouting.
I am often asked by people, is scouting growing, stationary, or fading out, and my answer is always emphatically "'growing". There are over six-and-a-half hundred thousand scouts in Great Britain alone. There are over six million in the world. Even in our own City of Chester there are getting on for a thousand!
And from those Troop rooms emerge boys to open other doors too. The doors of old people at Christmas, to whom they take firewood, or Christmas parcels. The doors of the old people's homes, when they take a bus to give them an outing.
Lest what I have said before may lead you to believe that the Movement is a body of serious "do gooders", let me say right away that Scouting is fun - great fun. You will see some of it as you watch this show tonight as we open the door (or more properly we draw the curtain) on Scouting for you to see a bit of what it's like.
Some times the door of Scouting is closed to some boys. It's because they are on the waiting list of the Group they want to join. And they are on the waiting list because we have too few Scouters to do the responsible job of running or helping to run Scout troops. If you fancy the idea of helping, come and have a word with me, and I'll be glad to tell you what you could do. I often say that if I had twice the number of Scouters in Chester, I would have twice the number of Scouts, too, because there are boys anxious and willing to join our Movement. Will you help so that they find the door of Scouting open and don't have to stop and knock!
V. E. STONEBRIDGE, District Commissioner
