Scouting
 

Roland became a sort of scouting missionary. For two years he laboured, encouraging the growth of the movement.
He had a special gift of finding leaders and founding troops. Above all things he insisted that the Patrol System was the essence of scouting.

 

He went to Liverpool for six months after leaving Oxford, working in the office of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company with a view to learning the technique of shipping business. All his evenings were devoted to work in the Seamen's Mission or in the local Missions that look after the dockhands and other casual workers. On his return to London, where he worked for a while in the Union Castle Steamship Company's office, he renewed his interest in the East End, and decided to live, as long as he was free to do so, in the slums of Bethnal Green. He became Scout Commissioner for East and North-East London and Assistant Commissioner for Wales; but before assuming these offices he perfected his knowledge of Scouting by personal practice and made himself an ideally efficient scout master. He was, indeed, one of the ablest exponents of scoutcraft, and wrote several popular books on the subject. Of these the most important was "The Patrol System", which explains the working of a scout patrol, and in a series of "Letters to a Patrol Leader", which expound the principles of the scout law and give advice as to how to train tenderfoots so that they may pass the tests required of them. It is a complete training manual in itself, written with a simplicity and directness that shows how well he understood the mentality of his boys. These small books outline his views and these can still be read with interest for there is much wisdom underlying the dated style and the old organisational structure.