tenants to assist them.
The troops are divided into groups, or patrols of eight and treated as
units, each under its own responsible leader. An invaluable step in
character building is to put responsibility on the individual. This is
done in electing a Patrol Leader to be responsible for the control of
her Patrol. Leaders should serve a limited time and every girl in a
patrol should have the experience of serving some time during her
membership. It is up to her to take hold and develop the qualities of
each girl in her Patrol. It sounds a big order, but in practice it
works. With a friendly rivalry established between patrols a patrol
esprit de corps is developed and each girl in that patrol realizes that
she is herself a responsible unit and that the honor of her group
depends on her efficiency in playing the game. The patrol system is an
essential feature in Scouting. When this is lost sight of and the
attitude of a teacher is adopted, making the troop a _class_, the vital
spirit or meaning of Scouting is missed entirely. Although a powerful
personality always can succeed with young people, in individual
instances, it would be impossible to get enough of these people to make
any impression upon the thousands of girls in the organization.
Moreover, the average child is already overloaded with things to learn.
What nobody teaches her is how to control herself, and thus learn to
control others and take her share of responsibility. The whole Scouting
technique is adapted to exactly this idea and the patrol leader is the
key note of it.

_The troop whose captain is (apparently) not managing it, but whose
girls manage themselves under the Scout laws, is the ideal troop._

_The Court of Honor._ The Patrol Leaders and their "seconds" form the
"Court of Honor," which manages the internal affairs of the troop. Its
institution is the best guarantee for permanent vitality and success for
the troop. It takes a great deal of minor routine work off the shoulders
of the Scout captain, and at the same time gives to the girls a real
responsibility and a serious outlook on the affairs of their troop. It
was mainly due to the Patrol Leaders and to the Courts of Honor that the
British Boy Scouts were able to carry on useful work during the war. The
Court of Honor decides rewards and punishments, and interprets rules in
individual instances.

_Methods._ Not only should the activities be those which they are not
getting through other cha