2G2 JOURXAL OF I'ORKSTRY 



making. This merely indicates the wide range of the war uses of forest 

 products, and it indicates also why a large and ever larger staff of 

 investigators — foresters, engineers, physicists, and chemists was needed 

 to work on problems of wood. 



In practically all phases of wood preparation and utilization there 

 was throughout the war a very urgent demand for accurate knowledge, 

 not that which is obtained by rule of thumb, which of course has its 

 value, but rather that obtained by painstaking investigations. This was 

 true of the simplest uses — for example, the wooden box— of the things 

 we are all likely to take as a matter of course, and far more true of the 

 newer and more exacting requirements such as aircraft and explosives. 

 And with the demand for accurate knowledge came an equally insistent 

 demand for the man who knew scientifically. This made the problem 

 of holding together an organization outside of the military departments, 

 much less of increasing it rapidly, one of extraordinary difficulty. 



In peace-time research a problem of today is pretty likely to be one 

 tomorrow, but in war one can be certain of nothing. I am speaking of 

 the industrial application of results rather than fundamental research. 

 The problem of steam bending heavy oak for artillery wheels without 

 great loss is with us today in an acute form, but we are led to under- 

 stand that in the motorized artillery for the spring drive of 1919 wheels 

 would have been replaced entirely by a steel caterpiller tread. When 

 the gas mask needed only to afford protection against chlorine, our 

 problem may have been one of quantity production of beech charcoal 

 wathin certain temperature limits. The use of other gases brought in 

 the cocoanut shell and later the shells and pits of other nuts and fruits. 

 Still later the problem became one of supplementing shell and pit char- 

 coal by one made from wood waste distilled under a special process. 

 The solid wing beam of today must be replaced by a laminated struc- 

 ture tomorrow, and the complicated truss fuselage of yesterday be- 

 comes today a beautiful and comparatively simple structure stamped 

 from plywood. The live investigative program of war time, even when 

 it deals with forest products, must take into account very rapidly 

 changing conditions. 



As to the field covered in Forest Service investigations and results 

 obtairied, time permits only the briefest review. Investigations were, 

 of course, wonderfully stimulated. It was necessary to make material 

 increases in the organization. At the time the armistice was signed 

 there were in the Branch of Research something over 500 persons, a 

 large proportion of this force being stationed at the Forest Products 



