[Illustration: KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE DOG.]
One bit of advice I gave to the Birmingham Scouts was that, if ever
you run a race with a dog, keep your eye on the dog, and don't look
about at other things. I myself was an example of "how not to do it,"
for I had had a race with my dog--I was running in shorts--and he saw
me looking round and promptly ran between my legs and threw me over.
So I had to go to Birmingham on two sticks with a bandaged knee.
But what is true of a dog race is true of any other competition in
life. When you start out to do a thing, keep your attention fixed on
what you are doing, and do not let it wander off to other things,
otherwise you may come a cropper.
It is a bit of a handicap to go about inspecting Scouts with one leg
out of action, but still I was only carrying out the example of other
Scouts.
There was Rob. Miller, a Scout at Whitby, who, when he lost a leg
through a German shell, was quite cheery, and wrote to me that he felt
it an honour to be the first Scout wounded whilst on duty, and that he
meant to go on scouting notwithstanding the loss of a leg.
Another Scout who lost his eye through a Toby Tenderfoot fooling with
a gun wrote to say that he could go scouting just as well with one eye
as with two. That is the spirit of the scouts.
In addition to these, I had a fine example in a namesake of mine,
Major H. G. Powell, out at the Front. He had left the Army some ten
years ago, but when the war broke out he went back to his old
regiment. In advancing to an attack he sprained his ankle badly.
However, he got a stick and a chair from a neighbouring cottage, and
continued to hobble along at the head of his men, sitting down
whenever there was a halt and directing their operations from the
chair. He went on doing this until he himself was hit and badly
wounded, and he was able to be carried safely back still sitting in
his chair.
[Illustration: A CHEERY OLD SCOUT.]
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