EDITORIAL AND GENERAL 



377 



to the spiritual rather than to the phy- 

 sical salvation of men, let us substi- 

 tute either betterment or preservation 

 of mankind. 



Crowned with the dignity of utility 

 and the grace of aesthetics, conserva- 

 tion is enthroned on the hilltops of 

 popular understanding as the prime 

 minister of a regal power which is to 

 restore the wasted forests and dimin- 

 ishing streams, and their wild inhabi- 

 tants. Preservation, however, passes, 

 through the valleys and lowlands of 

 the people's crying needs and depriva- 

 tions, carrying hope to the highest and 

 lowliest. Conservation is the rugged 

 son of a sweet mother whose chief 

 concern is the salvation of men. 



Without a thought of impiety, the 

 apostle of conservation believes that 

 the spiritual advancement of his fel- 

 low men is incidental to, and not the 

 primary purpose of, the conservation 

 of mankind. Even the intellectual and 

 the social advancement of the race are 

 not made prime factors in the conser- 

 vation proposition, but, like the spiri- 

 tual welfare, must in the interests of 

 singleness of aim remain corollaries. 

 And exalted corollaries to the splendid 

 proposition they are, since they must 

 be greeted as inevitable consequences 

 of the physical and creature improve- 

 ment of mortal existence and human 

 living. 



Perhaps no more painstaking, ob- 

 servant, sympathetic, and authoritative 

 student of nature ever threaded the 

 paths of the woods or meandered 

 through the flowering meadows than 

 Henry David Thoreau. Yet on his re- 

 turn from a trip with "Nature, the 

 dear old nurse," he is found pointing 

 a criticism at his human brothers and 

 sisters in this fashion : 



Of all phenomena my own race are the 

 most mysterious and undiscoverable. For 

 how many years have I striven to meet one, 

 even on common manly ground, and have not 

 succeeded. 



Was Thoreau's a case in any material 

 way dissimilar to that of many men 

 and women of today who go into rhap- 

 sodies, not over conservation, but over 



their own ideas of conservation? 



"Reformers are like Esquimaux 

 dogs, which must be hitched to the 

 sledge each by a separate thong: if put 

 in one common harness, the} turn and 

 eat each other up," declares Thomas 

 Went worth Higginson. 



The true conservationist is not a 



JOHN A. DIX, GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 



reformer. He is a restorer. The vari- 

 ous activities, humanitarian either in 

 declared purpose or in latent character- 

 istic, have accomplished much to- 

 wards man's uplift, but the goal is 

 much farther off than it should be 

 today, and than it would be had they 

 not been working in separate harness. 

 Too often it appears that the uplift or- 

 ganizations and institutions have not 

 only been hitched to different sledges, 

 but also have been pulling in divergent 

 and frequently in opposite directions. 

 No wonder that it sometimes seems 

 that human progress has been dis- 

 ci luragingly slow. 



The utilization of natural resources 

 now wasted in the forests and waters 

 will procure for the workman and the 

 capitalist shorter hours and more 



