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The Scout Mottoes.
With all the earnestness and thoroughness of the Boy Scout, there is a note of laughing philosophy running through the organisation which takes the edge off the worries that have bothered grown-ups, whose boyhood belonged to a sterner generation. The mottoes around the walls of the Exhibition are exhortations that laugh in the face of sorrow, and arc eloquent of the spirit that is behind these bare-armed, bare-kneed boys, who turn London suburbs into prairie land with their swift imagination, and replant the streets of Birmingham with the oak, the ash, and the thorn of old England. The mottoes are in green and yellow—the Scouts' colours—and are all put before the boys by their versatile Chief Scout. They read:—
- "Be a brick."
- "Pass it on."
- "Try whistling."
- "The oak was once an acorn."
- "Smile all the time."
- "Stick to it, stick to it."
- "Don't stand with your back to the sun."
- "Don't shoot the musician, he's doing his best."
- "Softly, softly catchee monkey."
- "When the cat's away, the mice will play" (the little rotters!).
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