The Boy Scout Handbook

Oxford University Press has re-issued Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship (a/k/a "The Boy Scout Handbook") by Robert Baden-Powell, which was first published in 1908. (W. David Myers reviews in today's Tribune.)

Some of Baden-Powell's descriptions are quite fascinating, particularly when he laments the English becoming a nation of soccer fans:

Thousands of boys and young men, pale, narrow-chested, hunched-up, miserable specimens, smoking endless cigarettes, numbers of them betting, all of them learning to be hysterical as they groan or cheer in panic unison with their neighbours.

But for the most part, the aristocrat Baden-Powell wasn't particularly enlightened, as illustrated most vividly when he praises bees:

"They are quite a model community, for they respect their Queen and kill their unemployed."