Seeds of Empire.

This article presents information about the book "The Character Factory: Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts and the Imperatives of Empire," by Michael Rosenthal. The anxieties and preoccupations of the imperial nation into which Robert Baden-Powell introduced the Boy Scout movement some seventy-five years ago have a familiar look to them. To the gifts of demagogy and plagiarism Baden-Powell added a keen political sense of alliances. The usefulness of a movement inculcating patriotism and obedience did not escape the generals, politicians and newspaper proprietors who backed Baden-Powell to the hilt.