Crusader Squelched

Those who conduct Boy Scout affairs in the City of Cleveland passed a resolution last fortnight, saying: "Be it resolved, that whereas recent advertisements have been creeping closer and closer toward the inducement of girls to adopt the smoking of cigarettes, and whereas this purpose is being more and more plainly announced, it is felt to be the duty of this council to declare that the now-appearing billboard advertisement which portrays a young lady reading a letter to the effect that girls who seek pleasure in smoking are flocking to that given brand of cigarette, is an advertisement which merits strong disapproval and censure, because it is a flagrant luring and seductive effort to entice the girlhood of America to the habit of smoking.

"We commend to each of the million Boy Scouts of our country that he adopt as his 'daily good turn' the creation of a sentiment disapproving of such unpatriotic efforts as the enticement of our girls and young men."

The nation's press, as everyone knows, points with pride to almost all forms of tobacco advertising, which helps to make profits to buy publishers fat cigars. The sentiment put forth in the name of Cleveland's Boy Scouts, caused a flurry of japes, jibes and ridicule in the nation's press. All Boy Scouts suffered when journalistic smartcrackers suggested ways and means for Cleveland's Boy Scouts to accost women on the street, ask them if they smoke, beg them to refrain.

Soon, however, James E. West, Chief of the Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America, wrote a letter to rebuke President Floyd A. Rowe of the Cleveland Boy Scout Council, whose idea the cigaret crusade apparently was. Executive West told Executive Rowe that the provincial council had a "misunderstanding as to the real aims and purposes of the Boy Scout movement." The real aim, he said, is to make better boys, not to preach to others on matters of private conduct.