1040 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



SHE FACED THE CAMERA 



Nevertheless she was no fanciful worker but able to do her share of a day'i 

 labor in a highly efficient manner. 



erly dealt with. In addition she was more adaptable, 

 more reliable, and gave better satisfaction to her em- 

 ployer. These women were drafted to various kinds of 

 forestry work, e. g., seed collection, forest nursery work, 

 planting work, draining, bark peeling, timber felling, 

 brushwood burning, and bracken cutting. 



"Although the period of instruction is too short almost 

 to warrant the term training being used, reports from 

 the employers of these women show that the scheme has 

 been more than justified. Their work has included 

 draining, planting, fencing, nursery work of all kinds, 

 felling timber, 'snedding' and cross-cutting timber, meas- 

 uring timber, and saw mill work. Further, they have 

 engaged in general estate work, bark-peeling, bracken 

 cutting, clearing up and burning brushwood. During hay 

 time and harvest they have been drafted to this work, 

 which has the advantage of giving that variety which 

 experience shows is so necessary in women's work on 

 the land. 



"The efifect on the women of this kind of work, has 

 been noticed, and in no case has it been found to he 

 detrimental. They have all been able for the work under- 

 taken, and have quickly become fairly expert at it. 

 Their health has, in all cases, materially improved with 

 the out-door occupation, and this has been so even in cases 

 where they have been employed all winter." 



STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF FORESTS IN THE WAR 



BY J. DEMORLAINE 



Translated by Samuel T. Dana, U. S. Forest Service, from Revue des Eaux ct Forets, Paris, 



France, February, 1919, and revised to date by Percival S. Ridsdale, 



Editor of American Forestry. 



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w 



OODS are an ornament in peace and a fortifica- 

 tion in war," wrote Cicero two thousand years 

 ago. Was he thinking at the time of the bar- 

 barian invasions which menaced the Roman world and 

 which the destruction of the forests of Gaul by the legions 

 of Cassar succeeded only momentarily in arresting? Cer- 

 tainly in uttering this aphorism, eternally true and now 

 more than ever justified, the prince of Latin orators 

 could not foresee the war in which we have been engaged 

 for more than four years, and in which the woods and 

 forests of France have perhaps played as vital a role as 

 our cannon. It is to wood — wood in all its forms, 

 utilized behind, within, and in front of our trenches — that 

 we owed our ability, in spite of inferior numbers, to hold 

 in check the barbarian hordes invading our native soil. 

 No one could have anticipated that modern war — pre- 

 pared for, in fact, as a war wholly of movement — would 

 have become for long months a war of position, trans- 

 forming our front, from the North to the East, into a 

 vast entrenched camp, and demanding wood in the most 

 diverse forms, from entanglement stakes or telephone 



pole cross-arms, to timbers buried several feet below 

 ground, — from the smallest coppice pole to the most 

 majestic veteran of the forest. Our French forests were 

 fortunately very rich. Thanks to the conservative fore- 

 sight of our foresters since the organization of the pres- 

 ent conscientious and devoted forest administration, they 

 have been able to satisfy all needs in spite of the im- 

 portant and more and more numerous demands of the 

 army. 



While this is not the chief role which foresters and 

 military men had believed the forests would play if war, 

 always menacing, should unchain its ravages on our coun- 

 try, can anyone say that they have failed to measure up 

 to all the expectations which the facts of history, classic 

 through repetition since the most remote times, might 

 arouse? By no means; our woods and our forests have 

 not only given us unreservedly of their- riches to enable 

 us to hold our own against the invader, but they have 

 also played a no less glorious part in the episodes of this 

 unforgetable war, which will unquestionably remain the 

 most terrible and most monstrous war of modern times. 



