Part 1 (1/2)

Facing the German Foe.

by Colonel James Fiske.

CHAPTER I

SERIOUS NEWS

”As long as I can't be at home,” said Harry Fleming, ”I'd rather be here than anywhere in the world I can think of!”

”Rather!” said his companion, d.i.c.k Mercer. ”I say, Harry, it must be funny to be an American!”

Harry laughed heartily.

”I'd be angry, d.i.c.k,” he said, finally, ”if that wasn't so English--and so funny! Still, I suppose that's one reason you Britishers are as big an empire as you are. You think it's sort of funny and a bit of a misfortune, don't you, to be anything but English?”

”Oh, I say, I didn't quite mean that,” said d.i.c.k, flus.h.i.+ng a little. ”And of course you Americans aren't just like foreigners. You speak the same language we do--though you do say some funny things now and then, old chap.

You know, I was ever so surprised when you came to Mr. Grenfel and he let you in our troop right away!”

”Didn't you even know we had Boy Scouts in America?” asked Harry. ”My word--as you English would say. That is the limit! Why, it's spread all over the country with us. But of course we all know that it started here--that Baden-Powell thought of the idea!”

”Rather!” said d.i.c.k, enthusiastically. ”Good old Bathing-Towel! That's what they used to call him at school, you know, before he ever went into the army at all. And it stuck to him, they say, right through. Even after Mafeking he was called that. Now, of course, he's a lieutenant general, and all sorts of a swell. He and Kitchener and French are so big they don't get called nicknames much more.”

”Well, I'll tell you what I think,” said Harry, soberly. ”I think he did a bigger thing for England when he started the Boy Scout movement than when he defended Mafeking against the Boers!”

”Why, how can you make that out?” asked d.i.c.k, puzzled. ”The defence of Mafeking had a whole lot to do with our winning that war!”

”That's all right, too,” said Harry. ”But you know you may be in a bigger war yet than that Boer War ever thought of being.”

”How can a war think, you chump?” asked the literal-minded d.i.c.k.

Again Harry roared at him.

”That's just one of 'our funny American ways of saying things,' d.i.c.k,” he explained. ”I didn't mean that, of course. But what I do mean is that everyone over here in Europe seems to think that there will be a big war sometime--a bigger war than the world's ever seen yet.”

”Oh, yes!” d.i.c.k nodded his understanding, and grew more serious. ”My pater--he's a V. C., you know--says that, too. He says we'll have to fight Germany, sooner or later. And he seems to think the sooner the better, too, before they get too big and strong for us to have an easy time with them.”

”They're too big now for any nation to have an easy time with them,” said Harry. ”But you see what I mean now, don't you, d.i.c.k? We Boy Scouts aren't soldiers in any way. But we do learn to do the things a soldier has to do, don't we?”

”Yes, that's true,” said d.i.c.k. ”But we aren't supposed to think of that.”

”Of course not, and it's right, too,” agreed Harry. ”But we learn to be obedient. We learn discipline. And we get to understand camp life, and the open air, and all the things a soldier has to know about, sooner or later.

Suppose you were organizing a regiment. Which would you rather have--a thousand men who were brave and willing, but had never camped out, or a thousand who had been Boy Scouts and knew about half the things soldiers have to learn? Which thousand men would be ready to go to the front first?”

”I never thought of that!” said d.i.c.k, mightily impressed. ”But you're right, Harry. The Boy Scouts wouldn't go to war themselves, but the fellows who were grown up and in business and had been Boy Scouts would be a lot readier than the others, wouldn't they? I suppose that's why so many of our chaps join the Territorials when they are through school and start in business?”

”Of course it is! You've got the idea I'm driving at, d.i.c.k. And you can depend on it that General Baden-Powell had that in his mind's eye all the time, too. He doesn't want us to be military and aggressive, but he does want the Empire to have a lot of fellows on call who are hard and fit, so that they can defend themselves and the country. You see, in America, and here in England, too, we're not like the countries on the Continent. We don't make soldiers of every man in the country.”

”No--and, by Jove, they do that, don't they, Harry? I've got a cousin who's French. And he expects to serve his term in the army. He's in the cla.s.s of 1918. You see, he knows already when he will have to go, and just where he will report--almost the regiment he'll join. But he's hoping they'll let him be in the cavalry, instead of the infantry or the artillery.”