266 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



mission has just begun, President Pack explains. William 

 C. Redfield, Secretary of the Department of Commerce, 

 says that the whole world is short of food sujjplies and 

 that the future of civilization is dependent upon the crops 

 of 1917. The war has taken from the fields of Europe the 

 men needed to till the soil, and the women, though valianth- 

 struggling behind the plow with that imperishable fire of 



WHAT GIRLS CAN DO 



In Europe the farming is now being done largely by women who have taken the 

 place of men now at the front. In America this year girls are doing a great part toward 

 realizing the ambition of the National Emergency Food Garden Commission — 

 2,000,000 town and city gardens to insure sufficient food. These Pittsburgh 

 children agree that girls make as good gardeners as their brothers or parents. 



patriotism burning in their breasts, are unable to produce 

 the food necessary for millions of hungry, desperate men 

 who battle because they are told to battle. 



The truth of the matter is that hunger stalks abroad, 

 armies waver, and nations are trembling at their very 

 foundations. For without food, revolution comes, and 

 with revolution comes chaos and death and destruction to 

 all alike. Without grain and meat from this country, and 

 ammunition and arms, these latter the product of food-fed 

 men, the nations of Etirope must perish. The world knows 

 this, and seeks not to discount the truth. There are periods 

 in history when truth towers above all chicanery and petty 

 artifices of diplomatists. Such is the case today. Sophis- 

 try is giving way to humble truthfulness. The cry for 

 food is "heard around the world. " 



The one great question which now confronts the people 

 of this country is whether the Government can cope with a 

 Ijroljlem the magnitude of which never before has any 

 nation contemplated. Food is the one dominating, all- 

 powerful creative force which holds the destiny of the 

 civilized world within its grasp. President Pack and his 

 fellow members of the Commission feel that the farmer 

 and rancher cannot alone supply food in suflicient quantity 

 to feed this and the great nations of Europe, and that it is 

 urgently necessary that the millions of individual city 

 dwellers continue with undiminished vigor the home gar- 

 den cultivation compaign. Unless this is done it is believed 

 not only by President Pack and his colleagues but by the 



Government itself that a shortage of food will result that 

 will cause national, and, indeed, international suffering on 

 the part of millions. 



The Commission feels that every man and woman, boy 

 and girl, should "do his bit." The schools soon will be 

 closing for the summer period. Hundreds of thousands of 

 youths and young girls who heretofore have indulged in 

 baseball, temiis, golf and other fomis of outdoor life, 

 should cast aside such indulgences and rush to the aid of 

 their country by mobilizing in the ranks of food-producing 

 toilers. As Disraeli once said, "Old age is unknown to 

 genius," and so the Commission repeats in its appeal to 

 the men and women who are unable to aid their country 

 other than through cultivation of gardens, "take up the 

 hoe and rake and make America efficient." Old men, 

 veterans of past conflicts, may well shoulder the spade, 

 may well devise new methods of food production, for the 

 time for "universal service" to mankind is at hand. Age 

 is no limit, no banner to achievement. Milton was 57 and 



A NEIGHBORHOOD POTATO PATCH 



The summer school vacation of three months was originally a rural institution, 

 invented by farmers to give their sons time to help with the harvesting. When 

 city "schools fell heir to the vacation habit the problem arose of keeping the boys 

 busy. The food garden largely solves the problem, and the boys like it. Potatoes 

 take too much room for a small garden, so this street in a Massachusetts town 

 has a community potato patch, cultivated largely by the children. 



blind when he wrote "Paradise Lost," Dante was almost 

 70 when he composed his famous epic, Haydn produced 

 his sublime "Creation" at 68, while Verdi was past 70 

 when he wrote the score of "FalstafT." Names of others 

 might be multi]ilied indefinitely to prove conclusively that 

 men and women only outlive their usefulness when they 

 think their usefulness is past. The Commission points to 

 these examples merely as an illustration for the guidance 

 of those who because of age harbor the behef that they are 

 incapacitated for "duty." For, says the Commission, 

 "We are old only when we think ourselves old." 

 I , Back in 1902 Rudyard Kipling lashed his countrymen 

 for their blindness in not being able to see that the future 

 was preparing for them just the fate that did befall when 

 the world- war broke out. In the poem which KipHng called 

 "The Islanders," and which might almost as aptly have 

 been written for the United States, he said; "Ye set your 



