remarked the
colonel, "but the boy made it quite clear that he wasn't going to have
any nonsense; so I thought it best to come quietly."

At a much later stage, one of these youngsters was especially told off
to a branch which I then controlled--an extraordinary boy, who
impressed one all the more owing to his looking considerably younger
than he really was. I seldom found anything that he did not know, and
never found anything that he could not do. This Admirable Crichton was
spangled all over well-earned badges, indicating his accomplishments.
We really might have gone off, the whole lot of us, masterful staff
officer, dainty registration clerks, highly efficient stenographer,
etc., and had a good time; he would have run the show perfectly well
without us--a Hirst, a Jimmy Wilde, a "Tetrarch," as he was amongst
scouts.

The plan that the lads adopted for making things uncomfortable for
troublesome people paid eloquent testimony to that fertility of
resource which it is one of the objects of the scout movement to
develop in its members. One of the greatest worries to which War
Office officials were exposed during these anxious times was a bent on
the part of individuals, whom they had not the slightest wish to see,
for demanding--and obtaining--interviews. The scouts tumbled to this
(if one may use so vulgar an expression) almost from the first day,
and they acted with rare judgement and determination. They chose
_lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate_ for their motto, and adopted
the method of herding the intruders into an unattractive apartment on
the ground floor, as tube attendants herd subterranean travellers into
the lifts, and of keeping the intruders there until they verged on a
condition of mutiny. They then enlarged them in big parties, each of
which was taken control of by a scout, who led his charges round and
round and in and out along the corridors, and up and down between
floors, carefully avoiding the elevators, until the victims were in a
state of physical and mental collapse. If one of the party quitted the
ranks while on the trek, to read the name marked up on some door that
he was passing, the scout called a halt and withered the culprit with
a scowl--it would never have done to permit that sort of thing,
because the visitor might conceivably have noticed the name of the
very official whom he had come to see. Anybody who came again after
undergoing this experience once, probably had just cause