Lieutenant General Sir Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell is a man of 69, with upright carriage and snapping eye, such as become a veteran who has campaigned in Zululand, Ashanti, Matabeleland, at Mafeking, in the Transvaal. King Edward dubbed him Knight, King George dubbed him Baronet, 600,000 American boys call him "Chief Scout of the World," and last week at the 16th annual convention of the Boy Scouts of America, Dan Beard, chief U. S. scout, presented him with a silver buffalo and called him "our contemporaneous ancestor." (Sir Robert protested: "That suggests monkeys.")
The meeting was in Washington, and 2,500 Boy Scout officials and 2,000 scouts were assembled. In large part Sir Robert Baden-Powell was responsible for the meeting. Although Dan Beard's Sons of Daniel Boone and Ernest Thompson Seton's Woodcraft Indians antedated the boy scout organizations, it was the Boy Scout Organization founded in England by Sir Robert which became the prototype of the Boy Scouts of America, which the Beard and Seton organizations formed by amalgamation. Amid a storm of pacifist ridicule, Baden-Powell started the organization in England. He first won the approval of Lord Roberts and in 1909 paid a visit to Edward VII at Balmoral. His enthusiasm carried the old King away, and when the veteran left Balmoral he carried not only the royal approval but a Knighthood and the Star of a Knight Commander of the Victorian Order for himself. Three years later there were 400,000 Boy Scouts in England.
For two days, with their "contemporaneous ancestor" among them, Scout Leaders made plans for the coming year. New officials, men of prominence, were elected: Walter W. Head of Omaha, President (succeeding Milton A. McRae of Detroit); Mortimer L. Schiff of Oyster Bay, Vice President, also Milton A. McRae; George D. Pratt, Treasurer; Daniel Carter Beard, National Scout Commissioner (re-elected). The honorary officers include Calvin Coolidge, President, and Vice Presidents William H. Taft, William G. McAdoo, Colin H. Livingstone.
Two thousand Scouts called on their Honorary President at the White House, and then had a great rally on the Ellipse just to the south. On the final evening a meeting was held in the D. A. R. building, at which the President spoke.
The same evening a new award, the Silver Buffalo, was created— "for distinguished service to boyhood." The first recipient was Sir Robert Baden-Powell. It was also conferred on 20 others, some of them dead, who have given their services unstintedly to the Scout movement. Hereafter this medal will be awarded to not more than five men annually.