GREAT BRITAIN: Little Red Eagle Scout

Bristol's energetic young (19) Paul Garland is a good scout—good enough to wear the Queen's Badge, the British equivalent of the Eagle Scout in the U.S. Paul Garland is also a good Communist: he was recently appointed secretary of the West of England Young Communist League. Last week, on the grounds that virtue in both of these pursuits is incompatible, the British Boy Scouts Association asked Queen's Scout Garland to turn in his uniform. No Communist, said the association, could possibly live up to the Scout promise "to do my duty to God."

In the uproar that followed, a Labor Member of Parliament challenged British Chief Scout Lord Rowallan to debate forthwith the question: "Whether a Boy Scout can be a Communist." As Communists paraded the streets outside Westminster urging the government to "put McCarthyism out of the Boy Scouts," Lord Rowallan declared firmly: "We have a duty to our boys and parents to protect them from undue influences."

Meanwhile, refusing to quit until he was fired, Scout Garland marched off to watch members of his troop perform a pantomime of Little Red Riding Hood.