SCOUTING FOR GIRLS 
27 
grandmother!) were among the first to answer their 
Country’s call. 
Let us hear what our British sisters accomplished, and 
we must remember that at the time of the war there were 
many Girl Guides well over Scout age and in their twen- 
ties, who had had the advantage, as their book points out, 
of years of ! training. 
This is what they have done during the Great War. 
In the towns they have helped at the Military Hospitals. 
In the country they have collected eggs for the sick, and on 
the moors have gathered sphagnum moss for the hospitals. 
Over in France a great Recreation and Rest Hut for the 
soldiers has been supplied by the guides with funds earned 
through their work. It is managed by Guide officers, or ex- 
Guides. Among the older Guides there are many who have done 
noble work as assistants to the ward-maids, cooks, and laundry 
women. In the Government offices, such as the War Office, the 
Admiralty, and other great departments of the State, they have 
acted as orderlies and messengers. They have taken up work in 
factories, or as motor-drivers, or on farms, in order to release 
men to go to the front. 
At home and in their club-rooms they have made bandages for 
the wounded, and warm clothing for the men at the Front and in 
the Fleet. 
At home in many of the great cities the Guides have turned 
their Headquarters’ Club-Rooms into “Hostels.” That is, they 
have made them into small hospitals ready for taking in people 
injured in air-raids by the enemy. 
So altogether the Guides have shown themselves to be a 
pretty useful lot in many different kinds of works during the 
war, and, mind you, they are only girls between the ages of 11 
and 18. But they have done their bit in the Great War as far 
as they were able, and have done it well. 
There are 100,000 of them, and they are very smart, and ready 
for any job that may be demanded of them. 
They were not raised for this special work during the war 
for they began some years before it, but their motto is “Be Pre- 
pared,” and it was their business to train themselves to be ready 
for anything that might happen, even the most unlikely thing. 
So even when war came they were “all there” and ready 
for it. 
It is not only in Great Britain that they have been doing this, 
but all over our great Empire — in Canada and Australia, West, 
East and South Africa, New Zealand, the Falkland Islands, West 
Indies, and India. The Guides are a vast sisterhood of girls, 
ready to do anything they can for their country and Empire. 
