THE GREAT WAR AND GERMAN FORESTS 



611 



A Stand of Spruce in Bavaria, Germany 



brought me. The United States should 

 treat our forests of every kind as a 

 National Concern — not a private mat- 

 ter. Even the States are individually 

 incompetent on account of the forests 

 being frequently at the boundaries. 



The normal value of wood lot land 

 in the settled portions of the country 

 is barbarously low in price because the 

 farmer can have no protection from fires 

 and not very much from depredation 

 of other kinds. Today I am forced to 

 cut down all my chestnuts because of a 



blight which could never have done so 

 much harm had a German Forest 

 Administration existed. 



We need National control of every 

 patch of woods in this country and this 

 control should be wholly free from 

 political influence. 



As a farmer I welcome such control, 

 for I know that in Germany — after a 

 test of more than 100 years — the indivi- 

 dual German forest owner would no 

 more revert to the crude methods of 

 pre-Napoleonic times than would we 



