From the diary we learn that he left Mill House on January 6th, 1908, but there is no evidence of how far at that date the book was completed. Although publication began that month, the whole was not ready, for under the date February 24th is the note, “Sent in Part V of S for B.” That is the last reference.

The manuscript suggests that Part VI gave him the most trouble; this, however, is a conjecture, since the surviving manuscript is not complete. There are three drafts for this Part—it was entitled “Notes for Instructors; it was later called “Principles and Methods.” In two of the drafts much space is given to developing the theme, “T he same causes which brought about the fall of the great Roman Empire are working to-day in Great Britain.” B.-P. had been deeply impressed by an anonymous pamphlet entitled “The Decline and Fall of the British Empire. A brief account of those causes which resulted in the destruction of our late Ally, together with a comparison between the Britis h and Roman Empires. Appointed for use in the National Schools of Japan, Tokio, 2005.” This was published in 1905. (History seems to have reversed the roles of Great Britain and Japan !). It was, as the title indicates, an imaginative account of what might happen if we did not pull up our socks. So greatly was B.-P. impressed that his first two drafts for the last part of Scouting for Boys were mainly on this theme and hardly touched on many of the topics he later discussed; and now it has all been condensed to a sentence. The main text of the book was not radically changed in any of the later editions revised by B.-P., but this last part he altered considerably from edition to edition.

It is important to realise that every development of Scouting has been produced on the demand of the boys themselves. B.-P. indeed never intended that Scouting for Boys should be other than an addition to the training already provided by the Boys’ Brigade, the Y.M.C.A., and other organisations.