FOREST RESEARCH AND THE WAR 2G3 



Laboratory. Not all of the activities could properly be classed as re- 

 search. Our plan was to aid whoever needed help wherever there was 

 opportunity without the formality of request or invitation. Our ques- 

 tion was not whether the line of work was fundamental research or 

 industrial research or research of any kind ; it was whether and how 

 an investigative organization could render assistance. 



First and last, our activities touched or dealt on a large scale with 

 practically every use of wood in modern warfare, aircraft both lighter 

 and heavier than air and for both land and sea, the wooden ship, mili- 

 tary vehicles, boxes and crates and containers and packing in general, 

 lumber and structural timber for many uses, gas warfare, both offen- 

 sive and defensive, explosives, including the production of grain alco- 

 hol, acetate of lime, and pulp for nitrocellulose, the products of hard- 

 wood distillation for various additional purposes, wooden limbs, fiber 

 board for various requirements, wooden pipe, wooden implement han- 

 dles, naval stores products, such as rosin for shrapnel, tannin, nose 

 plugs for shells, and pulp products for camouflage. Another Ust in- 

 cluded the essential non-military uses, such as fuel, potash, cars, shut- 

 tles, maple sugar, pulp, etc. 



Advice and assistance covered timber resources, both foreign and do- 

 mestic, as to location, quality, means of increasing production, methods 

 of manufacture in wood-using industries, the properties of wood, sub- 

 stitutes, methods of drying, storing, finishing, and preservation, the 

 preparation and review of specifications, inspection, the training of 

 men, various questions of economics relating to the wood-producing 

 and wood-using industries, and finally the field and laboratory investi- 

 gations necessary as a basis for the data needed. 



Co-operative relations were maintained in the War Department with 

 the General Staff, the Bureau of Aircraft Production, Ordnance De- 

 partment, Quartermaster Department, Surgeon General, Engineer 

 Corps, Panama Canal; in the Navy with the Bureaus of Construction 

 and Repair, Steam Engineering, Yards and Docks, Supplies and Pur- 

 chase ; and in addition with the Shipping Board, Fleet Corporation, 

 Fuel Administratitju, Advisory Commission of Aeronautics, Director 

 General of Railroads, War Trade Board, War Industries Board, wdth 

 several of our Allies, and with large numbers of manufacturers of war 

 orders. 



A large part of the activities of the organization centered around 

 the production and use of wood in aircraft construction — a highly ex- 

 acting and comparatively new field of endeavor. The nations whose 



