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You need not suppose that either of us in attaining this happiness had never had difficulties to contend with. Just the opposite.
It is the satisfaction of having successfully faced difficulties and borne pin-pricks that gives completeness to the pleasure of having overcome them.
Don't expect your life to be a bed of roses; there would be no fun in it if it were.
So, in dealing with the Scouts, you are bound to meet with disappointments and setbacks. Be patient: more people ruin their work or careers through want of patience than do so through drink or other vices. You will have to bear patiently with irritating criticisms and red tape bonds to some extent but your reward will come.
The satisfaction which comes of having tried to do one's duty at the cost of self-denial, and of having developed characters in the boys which will give them a different status for life, brings such a reward as cannot well be set down in writing. The fact of having worked to prevent the recurrence of those evils which, if allowed to run on, would soon be rotting our youth, gives a man the solid comfort that he has done something, at any rate, for his country, however humble may be his position.
This is the spirit with which Scoutmasters and Commissioners, Committeemen, instructors, organisers and secretaries - the word "Scouter" describes them all - work in the Boy Scout Movement.
The credit for the Organisation and the spread of the Scout Movement is due to this army of voluntary workers. Here we have remarkable if silent evidence of the fine patriotic spirit that lies beneath the surface of most nations. These men give up their time and energies, and in many cases their money as well, to the work of organising the training of boys, without any idea of reward or praise for what they are doing, they do it for the love of their country and their kind.
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