Multi-Generational Manhood
Excerpt from the Book The Birkenhead Drill by Doug Phillips
by Douglas W. Phillips, Esq., April 15, 2003
The same thing that entered into the training of these men, knights, pioneers ... must enter into the training of the boy scouts of today. Just as they respected women and served them, so the tenderfoot and the scout must be polite and kind to women, not merely to well-dressed women, but to poorly dressed women; not merely to young women, but to old women: to women wherever they may be found-wherever they may be. To these a scout must always be courteous and helpful. When a scout is walking with a lady or a child, he should always walk on the outside of the sidewalk, so that he can better protect them against the jostling crowds. This rule is only altered when crossing the street, when the scout should get between the lady and the traffic, so as to shield her from accident or mud. Also in meeting a woman or child, a scout, as matter of course, should always make way for them even if he himself has to step off the sidewalk into the mud. When riding in a street car or train a scout should never allow a woman, an elderly person, or a child to stand, but will offer his seat; and when he does it he should do it cheerfully and with a smile. (Boy Scout Handbook 1911 pg. 243-244)
One year before the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic, Lord Baton-Powell, the visionary founder of Boy Scouting worldwide, penned the above words for his very first Boy Scout Handbook. His mission was to communicate the practical outworking of Christian chivalry to the next generation of boys. It should be remembered that the idea that men were to act and live deferentially on behalf of women and children, though an ancient principle, was already under attack by 1911 from militant suffragettes intent on leveling the political playing field by removing from the public mindset the notion that women were a “weaker sex” in need of saving.
In calling for the boys of the twentieth century to live by the historic code of masculine sacrifice, Baton-Powell was adding his own part to a legacy of bold manhood which for generations had not only constituted the warp and woof of Christendom’s patriarchal ethic, but which Baton-Powell and some of his contemporaries had personally experienced during the grueling South African campaigns of the nineteenth century. From the siege of Mafeking to the Battle of Rork’s Drift, young men and old serving Queen and country in South Africa were called upon to live by this vision of manhood, often at great personal expense.
Heroism does not emerge from a vacuum. It is cultivated multi-generationally. It is nurtured through proverb and living example. It is impressed upon the minds and hearts of the young through the retelling of stories. And so it was that the very chivalric ethic which Baton-Powell would one day seek to advance through Scouting, was part of the heritage of his youth and the legacy of a group of South Africa-bound soldiers who laid the foundation for a maritime principle of “women and children first.” A principle that would one day be repeated during the most famous nautical disaster in history.
Sixty years before those sacred words were uttered by the captain of the R.M.S. Titanic, a similar order was given, and this time in the face of near certain death to drowning or shark attack. That story, the subject of this book, would inspire generations of men to do their part in times of crisis and would one day be immortalized by the pen of Rudyard Kipling as “Soldier and Sailor Too.”