WORK IN A NATIONAL FOREST 



No, 8. The Everyday Ranger 



By CHARLES HOWARD SHINN 



1HAVE been reading a book written 

 by a man whom I remember, years 

 ago, when he was a short, stubborn, 

 auburn-haired mountain boy, who came 

 to the preparatory department of the 

 newly estabhshed University of CaH- 

 fornia. He is now a professor of phil- 

 osophy — never mind where. In this 

 book he explains with convincing clear- 

 ness what seem to me the essentially 

 right relations of a man to himself, to 

 his cause, to humanity, and to the uni- 

 verse. 



This book sums it all up in the word 

 loyalty, as ultimately defined by him to 

 mean that which says to a man : "The 

 best that you can get lies in self-sur- 

 render and in your personal assurance 

 that the cause to which you surrender 

 yourself is indeed good. But your 

 cause, if it is indeed a reality, has a 

 good about it which no one man and 

 no mere collection of men can ever ver- 

 ify. This good of the cause is essen- 

 tially superhuman in its type, even 

 while it is human in its embodiment, for 

 it belongs to an union of men. to a 

 whole of human life which transcends 

 the individuality of any man, and 

 which is not to be found as something 

 belonging to any mere collection of 

 men. Let your supreme good, then, be 

 this : That you regard the cause as 

 real, as good, and that if the cause be 

 lost to any merely human sight, you 

 hold it to be nevertheless living in its 

 own realm— ^not apart, indeed, from 

 human life, but in the form of the ful- 

 filment of many human lives in one." 



Again, he sums it up : "Loyalty is the 

 will to manifest, so far as is possible, 

 the Eternal, that is, the conscious and 

 superhuman unity of life, in the form of 

 the acts of an individual self." Or, as 



still more plainly stated by Professor 

 Royce, whose book I heartily commend 

 to all the thinkers in the Forest Serv- 

 ice : "Loyalty is the will to believe in 

 something eternal, and to express that 

 belief in the practical life of a human 

 being." 



And how is all this related to the 

 plain forest rangers and guards — the 

 men behind the guns? They will not 

 read this philosophy ; they will not fol- 

 low any of the age-old discussions about 

 success, expediency, truth. No ! But 

 like the old rover in Stevenson's fable, 

 they will seize their axes and run joy- 

 ously to die with Odin. 



I must admit that long before the 

 "philosophy of loyalty" was made the 

 subject of a book, I tried faithfully to 

 put some such ideas into the minds of 

 rangers — until I found that they were 

 there already, and that their loyalty to 

 the large and growing ideals of a great 

 cause were teaching me much more 

 than I could ever hope to teach them. 

 They were finding out for themselves 

 that "it is better to be a spoke in a 

 wheel than a spoke out of a wheel." 

 They had not become rangers for the 

 pleasure of it, nor for the worldly suc- 

 cess, but because, having sworn alle- 

 giance, they had "neither eyes to see 

 nor ears to hear," save as the Forest 

 Service commands. But they cannot 

 talk much about it (and how very for- 

 tunate that is). I can imagine just 

 what some grizzled old ranger says at 

 the campfire a week after one of our 

 Saturday night meetings : 



"The boss gave us a string about loy- 

 alty ; said to play this game for all 

 there is in it. 'Taint decent to do noth- 

 in' else." 



I look back to 1902, when I came 



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