Far Round the World

Founders camp Eton College 1954: Danish Boys meet Boys from Neenah, Wisconsin.

Only a few years after the first meeting in a back street in Glasgow, we find the B.B. established in the new world of the United States of America. It was a very different scene. In the USA, Sabbath School Halls were usually comfortably carpeted.How could they cope with healthy, hearty Boys drilling up and down? Professor Henry Drummond, friend of the Founder and tireless enthusiast for all things B.B., gave his opinion: `a yard of Boy is worth fifty yards of carpet!' So the new movement flourished, and went on to become `The United Boys' Brigades of America.' Perhaps they had an early tendency `to run into gold braid, white gloves, cocked hats, feathers, and so on'. But today they apply themselves in true B.B. spirit to work for the Christian Education Badge, the Drill Badge, and Camping, Expedition and Sports Badges.

A lively picture of the pioneer American days is to be seen in a description of one of the early Camps of the lst San Francisco Company. It was held at Inverness, a remote spot in the Californian mountains by the side of a lake, beyond the forests of pine and redwood. The Boys at once `unlimbered their guns and went off in search of game', and their days at camp were occupied in hunting, fishing, boating, swimming and, of course, eating. No dummy rilles there! `That the Boys did justice to the plain but wholesome fare is evidenced by the fact that during the encampment they ate 11,800 loaves of bread, 2100 rolls, 275 pies, 4400 pounds of meat,150 dollars worth of groceries, 66 dollars worth of butter and eggs, and drank 50 dollars worth of milk.' Some Company! Some Country!

Company Activites in New Zealand. 

Far around the world

By the year 1889 there were already Companies in New Zealand, always one of the keenest B.B. regions of the world. The tireless Professor Drummond took himself off on a lecture tour of Australia with a specimen of The Boys' Brigade cap, belt and haversack and a large supply of B.B. literature, and in no time at all Melbourne was writing to William Smith in Glasgow for application forms, membership cards and order forms for equipment. Today, Australia, : New Zealand and Nigeria are, outside Britain, the three most populous B.B. countries in the world.

There was soon a B.B. Company in South Africa, the lst Natal, consisting of Zulu Boys, and in Europe, long before the EEC, there was a lst Brussels Company in Belgium. Canada and the West Indies also wore the B.B. uniform and there was an early Company in Calcutta, with Boys who were Indians, Jews, Eurasian, Burmese, Japanese and African.

Today you may spin the globe and find the B.B. almost everywhere. A body known as The World Conference binds together The Boys' Brigade of more than sixty countries of the world, as well as brother and sister organizations of similar aims and methods. You may, for example, join the B.B. at camp in the Solomon Islands, build your own leafy shelter, and enjoy an open-air supper of rice, sweet potato and fish fresh from the lagoon.In Papua New Guinea the Boys will be on trek through the tropical forest or splashing within the sweep of coral reefs along a coconut fringed shore.On parade they wear a distinctive sash and cap and go barefoot. And there are Companies to visit in the Cook Islands, Samoa, Bermuda, Belize, Haiti, Jamaica, the Bahamas, St. Kitts, and Anguilla. You need an atlas and a chart to find them all, and an island-hopping plane, but there will always be a B.B. welcome.

The Boys' Brigade has flourished from the beginning in West Africa. In Sierra Leone, Ghana, Cameroon, and especially in Niigeria (with a membership of over 70,000) where they are planning a National Headquarters in Lagos with a training centre, a camp house and a sports area.On the other side of that vast continent full-time B.B. workers serve the movement in Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe and in Zambia, where they have an agricultural project for Boys to encourage them to grow vegetables, rear chickens, and plant fruit trees - pawpaw, orange, guava, tangerine, mangoes and avocado pears - all for sale in the local market. In the poor but lovely mountain country of Lesotho a boy learns to herd cattle almost as soon as he can walk. One of the B.B. groups meets regularly at the cathedral in Maseru, the capital.

Australia's widely scattered Companies meet not only in the great modern cities such as Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, but also in faraway outposts with romantic names such as Nhulumbuy, Casurina, and Elcho Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The Pan-Australian Camps of The Boys' Brigade `down under' are the envy of the whole movement

The Brigade in the vast sweep of coast-to-coast Canada takes in the romantic Salmon Arm in British Columbia, Frobisher Bay at the top of the world, and Pictou and Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. The name for The Boys' Brigade in the Eskimo tongue is Sorusikattigerk, but the programme is universally B.B. - drill, songs, music-making, stories, handicrafts, games, and, in the forefront, `the advancement of Christ's Kingdom amozig Boys'.

In Asia there are B.B. Companies in India and Bangladesh, in Malaysia, `the land below the wind', Brunei and Hong Kong. It was Lance-Corporal Goh See Choon, aged 14, of the lst Seremban Company, Malaya, who noted that the volcanic island of Krakatoa, between Sumatra and Java, erupted ir. the year 1883. It was so violent that the noise was heard in Australia, over 2000 miles away. Clouds of dust particles brought about vivid sunsets all over the world for the next three years. But that 1883 explosion, said Goh See Choon, was as nothing to the founding of the B.B. the same year and its effect spreading across the world to Singapore,10,000 miles away!

The history of the Brigade in Singapore is a tale of courage and triumph in dark and evil days. It was an Aberdonian called James M. Fraser who set the B.B. in Singapore, the island outpost of Empire at the very tip of Asia. Fraser was Boy, NCO and Staff Sergeant in the 23rd Aberdeen, and he never left the B.B. all his life long. At the age of 20, as a qualified architect, he was in Singapore, on the other side of the world, with the promise to his former B.B. Captain that he would start a Company as soon as he could set about it. And so he did, with a first meeting of twelve Chinese Boys and Drill and Bible Class from the beginning. The Boys saved up penny by penny, week by week until they had a full uniform of blue shirt and shorts and blue stockings. They had their own gymnastic classes and tumbling teams and singles sticks and their first concert and display, and all, as Fraser said, `the way I was trained to do it in Aberdeen!'

James M. Fraser made a point of meeting the ships from home that came in to the bustling port and immediately got in touch with any likely B.B. Officers who had come out to the Colony to work. So, in a short time there was a second Company, and a third, a fourth, a fifth, and in no time at all, a Battalion, with their first President, James M. Fraser.We have already heard of'the two Singapore Boys, Choy Ah Soo and Tan Keng Kang who saved up to come to the Jubilee in Glasgow in 1933. Both Boys were in their final year at school and facing important exams, so Fraser made them promise to study for at least an hour every day all through their travels and the Jubilee celebrations in the West!

Calamity came in 1942 with the fall of Singapore to the Japanese, the worst single disaster in the history of the British Empire.Choy Ah Soo was only one of many loyal Chinese lined up on the beach and shot. James M. Fraser had been a Volunteer from the very day he arrived in Singapore as a young man - he did nothing by half - and at the outbreak of war he was in charge of the Singapore Searchlight Battery. With the fall of the city he was a prisoner of war for three and a half years in the horrors of Changi Jail and other Japanese prison camps. Even there, lying weak and sick with dysentery, he made secret contact with B.B. Boys and B.B. Officers, devising membership cards for a Stedfast Club from scraps of paper.

In Singapore the B.B. disappeared completely under the grim occupation of the Japanese. The Battalion Colours were burned to prevent their being desecrated by the enemy. They hid away their band instruments. When the great day of liberation came, out came the bugles and drums to be polished and refurbished, and when Fraser returned from his years in the prison camp the Battalion came to life again, with almost all the old Companies. Within three months he led a Battalion Church Parade at St.Andrew's Cathedral. In 1980 The Boys' Brigade in Singapore celebrated their half century, and without a doubt they will send representatives to the centenary celebrations in Glasgow. If you want to know what `Sure and Stedfast' means, take a look at Singapore, and thank God for men like James M. Fraser.

The last place one would expect to find The Boys' Brigade is the ' vast mysterious land of China. In fact, the first Company was founded 68 years ago in Swatow, South China, by a missionary, the Rev. A. Guthrie Gamble, who was a former Captain of the 6th Cambridge. It was the first of eight Companies in the South China Battalion, in a land of earthquake, typhoon, famine, flood, and constant warfare. Many of the B.B. Boys came to Swatow from the Philippines, the Malay Peninsula, and even Java, 2000 miles away.

We have only a fleeting glimpse of the Chinese B.B.in days of persecution. The Communists began a fierce anti-Christian campaign - church buildings were burned down and worship forbidden, B.B. Headquarters looted and their records destroyed. The Boys stood firm to their faith, but torture and killings followed. In the world story of the Brigade, China is a memory of martyrdom. Even the very name Swatow has vanished from the atlas.But tomorrow, in the vast land of China, in God's time, who knows?

The biggest B.B. Company in the world has 827 Boys and 308 leaders -1135 members in all.It is the Neenah-Menasha twin-city Company in Wisconsin, USA. One night in the fall of 1899 a local Presbyterian minister found half a dozen boys on the steps of the small town hall. They had no business to be out - the curfew sounded nightly because of the Spanish-American War - but they told the minister they wanted an `army' of their own. The Rev. Dr. Chapin said he would see what he could do. He knew the B.B. Aim and Object as William Smith had set it out in Scotland. So the B.B. in Neenah-Menasha began on 2lst January 1900 with some men of the community helping with drill and games. One of them, S. Frank Shattuck promised to give a hand `for a few months'. In all, he served for 56 years and came to be known to generation after generation of Boys as `father' of the Company.

At first they had various homes - a roller-skating rink, a warehouse, a gymnasium, a creamery. Nowadays they have a splendid building of their own with a completely equipped gym, basketball court and showers, assembly room and side-rooms with woodworking machinery, radio and photographic equipment and a library. A complete description of the Neenah-Menasha annual programme would fill a book, with news of their camp, hunting and fishing clubs, rille team, and hobbies of every kind. Its Christian tradition makes the Company the only one of its kind in the USA, with the strict rule that a Boy must maintain regular attendance at his own church or Sunday School, and the original B.B. motto at the heart of all their work`The advancement of Christ's Kingdom among Boys'.

To round off The World Conference one must mention the brother and sister organizations which have grown up from the inspiration of The Boys' Brigade. Best known of these is the FDF/FPF. The FDF - Frivilligt-Drenge-Forbund - which began in a suburb of Copenhagen in October 1902, has an Aim and Object which is a literal translation of the B.B. Aim. FPF is the similar organization for girls, aad between them they form Denmark's largest Christian Youth Organization, with more than 40,000 members. Many a British B.B. Company has been made welcome at Camp in Denmark, and the FDF are always smartly on parade as guests at every notable B.B. celebration.

In Sweden there is the Ansgarsforbundet, a uniformed organization for boys and girls within the national Church, and in Finland, Poikien Keskus, which is an organization of boys' clubs in the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The boys have no uniforms, but there are emblems and badges, a hiking centre in Finnish Lapland, and 62,000 eager members.

The World Conference began with The Boys' Brigade and every year sees it reach farther and farther round the globe as a worldwide movement of Christian fellowship and service among young people. They have in mind the lines of the B.B. hymn:

In Christ there is no East or West, In Him no South or North,

But one great fellowship of love Throughout the whole wide earth.