The Boy Scout Movement: After the grim defeats suffered during the Boer War, the concerned defenders of the British Empire were daunted by the appalling vision that the country's future lay in the hands of the flat-footed, morally unkempt, cigarette-smoking youths.  Robert Baden-Powell, ever ready to aid England (and himself in the process) now saw a golden opportunity to save Great Britain from imminent doom.  His purpose: a guaranteed source of efficient recruits for the defense of the empire, a "character factory" whose human products would bear the stamp of British public-school idealism (carefully modified for the less privileged classes), a romantic notion of Arthurian nobility and national pride, and an army-bred commitment to the virtues of strict obedience.
The Scouts were born in the anxieties of an imperial power at the turn of the century beginning to feel itself threatened both from without and from within-abroad, by the commercial competition offered by the expanding industrial capacity of the United States, Japan, and Germany, as well as the development of German military might; at home by the rumblings of the labor movement, union activity, and the specter they engendered of the working classes disturbing the serenity of a highly stratified society.  The Boer War (1899-1902) succeeded in focusing both internal and external threats in a visible and disturbing way, and through the trauma it inflicted on British self-confidence, helped establish the mood of national crisis that was precisely the culture in which the Scouting idea could best grow.

For Scouting was from the very beginning conceived as a remedy to Britain's moral, physical, and military weakness-conditions that the Boer War seemed to announce--especially to Tory politicians, social imperialists, and military leaders--were threatening the empire.  That it ultimately required close to 450,000 troops to subdue the 40,000 or so undisciplined Dutch farmers was indeed a grave indication of military frailty, but the lessons drawn from the war were far more embracing and serious than this: the whole empire was not seen to be vulnerable, precariously tied to a mother country that was itself tottering.  Military ineptitude in the field was matched by domestic and industrial inefficiency at home; both were fostered by the decline of the manly British character previously responsible for the country's greatness.  "You cannot maintain an A-1 Empire on C-3 men," as Baden-Powell was fond of reiterating (the phrase was originally Lloyd George's), and Britain suddenly looked around to find itself inundated with physically deficient men with pigeon chests, bad teeth, flat feet, and slack wills, lacking the passionate loyalty to British ideals that had helped to extend the empire over so much of the world's surface.  Sir Frederick Maurice's reports, based on his study of army recruiting data, that three out of every five recruits were unfit for armed service came as a terrible revelation to a country that had always prided itself on the caliber of its men.  The stout yeomen of yesteryear, on whom Britain had always seemed to depend in time of crisis, appeared upon examination to be mere memories of a grander time.  And if the Boers could manage as well and as long as they did, who would be available to withstand the well-trained German hordes when they attacked?
Scouting had no room in it for dissenters, doubters, visionaries, or any other subversive individualists.  Obedience to the state--and the willingness to sacrifice for it--is the sole measure by which personal worth is assessed.  The questioning intelligence is a danger that cannot be tolerated; the self is perceived as something to be suppressed, not nourished.  Scouting envisions a world of unchanging values and simple answers, once he joins, the young Scout need not bother himself about such things again.  The world is firmly divided into two distinct sides--the empire and the other--and all the Scout must do is "play the game" with pluck and good sportsmanship so that his side may win.  Promising to equip Great Britain with the disciplined human resources required for its survival constituted the irresistible appeal that Scouting offered the country.  Attractive as such a promise would be to a nation worried about its might, it nevertheless raises many more complicated questions about national ideals than Baden-Powell would have been willing to acknowledge.

The Imperial Mystique: During the last three decades of the Victorian Age Britons became conscious as never before of their imperial role.  Where once the very word "imperialism" carried an unpleasant (and un-English) taint of military despotism, it was now acclaimed as the expression of an ennobling ideal.
This imperial mystique took many forms and operated on many levels.  At the higher altitudes were historians, philosophers, and politicians who, speaking to their equals, propagandized for Empire for the most practical of reasons--to insure its health and survival.  The 1870s saw the birth of the imperial federation movement.  In the course of the next two decades a large number of schemes were put forward,