8 
SCOUTING FOR GIRLS 
VI. A Girl Scout Is a Friend to Animals 
All Girl Scouts take particular care of our dumb 
friends, the animals, and are always eager to protect 
them from stupid neglect or hard usage. This often leads 
to a special interest in their ways and habits, so That a 
Girl Scout is more likely to know about these little 
brothers of the human race than an ordinary girl. 
VII. A Girl Scout Obeys Orders 
This means that you should obey those to whom obedi- 
ence is due, through thick and thin. If this were not an 
unbreakable rule, no army could endure for a day. It 
makes no difference whether you are cleverer, or 
older, or larger, or richer than the person who may be 
elected or appointed for the moment to give you orders ; 
once they are given, it is your duty to obey them. And 
the curious thing about it is that the quicker and better 
you obey these orders, the more quickly and certainly 
you will show yourself fitted to give them when your 
time comes. The girl or woman who cannot obey can 
never govern. The reason you obey the orders of your 
Patrol Leader, for instance, in Scout Drill, is not that 
she is better than you, but because she happens to be 
your Patrol Leader, and gives her orders as she would 
obey yours were you in her place. 
A small, well trained army can always conquer and 
rule a big, undisciplined mob, and the reason for this is 
simply because the army has been taught to obey and to 
act in units, while the mob is only a crowd of separate 
persons, each doing as he thinks best. The soldier obeys 
by instinct, in a great crisis, only because he has had 
long practice in obeying when it was a question of un- 
important matters. So the army makes a great point of 
having everything ordered in military drill, carried out 
with snap and accuracy ; and the habit of this, once fixed, 
