Spy, Birder, Fox Hunter, and Boy Scout Founder

I am writing this week about spies and birds.

Which brings me to Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout movement.

Powell was a British secret agent in Africa near the turn of the 20th Century and he wrote a book about it, detailing the mechanics of spy craft, including drawings about the elements of disguise.

And good news! My Adventures As a Spy (1915) is available for FREE at the link.

Baden-Powell remarked that it often paid to appear stupid, and that he would sometimes pose as “one of the exceedingly stupid Englishmen who wandered about foreign countries sketching cathedrals, or catching butterflies.” 

It was all of a ruse, of course. Baden-Powell's concealed his detailed maps of enemy fortifications within the natural patterns of butterfly wings and tree leaves, and he sometimes showed off these sketches to local people, secure in the knowledge that they “did not know one butterfly from another — any more than I do.”

Robert Baden-Powell was a cavalry man in South Africa and in the Crimean War. Around the the turn of the Twentieth Century, he noted that the sport of fox hunting was one reason Britain was able to do so well with mounted regiments -- many in the cavalry had gotten their best training running to hounds.

Fox-hunting, when you come to think of it, is really a very wonderful institution. Although it has come to be quite an artificial sport in a wholly civilised country it still keeps going in every part of England in spite of the War, in spite of the decline in horse-breeding, and in spite of heavy taxes and heavier costs. It is one of the few old institutions left which still keeps us in touch to-day with the traditions and spirit of the former Old England. There is another point about it too. Having seen most of the cavalries of the world I have no doubt in my mind as to which is the most efficient for its work in war, and equally I have no doubt that fox-hunting is to a large extent responsible for that efficiency.

The nation really owes much to fox-hunting for what it has done to help our cavalry to compensate for its small quantity by its excellence in quality, and this without any extra call upon the taxpayer—for once!

The ex-Kaiser fully recognised this even before he had tasted its quality in the Great War, and he had established at Hanover a pack of hounds as part of the establishment of the Cavalry School there.

Of course, it was militarised, having a Captain as Master, a Sergeant-Major as huntsman, a Sargeant as first whip, and so on downwards.

Undoubtedly fox-hunting has proved a school for training men in riding fearlessly across country of all descriptions; it has taught them practical horsemastership, in economising the powers of the horse, and judging when to nurse him and when to let him go. It has also trained in them that invaluable attribute, 'an eye for country,' and not through dry lectures or boring field-days, but through a sport which appeals to their enthusiasm and gives them at once health and enjoyment."

Robert Baden-Powell was, of course, a birder and avid naturalist whose many books include "Birds and Beasts in Africa" (1938).