284 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



fighting for, used any weapon they could lay their hands on. Quite the 

 contrary, in fact, in regard to all of these matters. Of the essentials 

 of forestry we shall certainly put in practice much more than we have 

 as yet. I am saying that I think this will be done progressively, also 

 that what we carry out for a long time to come will not be the f orestr}- 

 of the books altogether or even mainly, but that it will be free, new 

 United States forestry, guided for the most part by economic con- 

 ditions. That seens to me inevitable; if so, it is important that the fact 

 be clearly recognized; as far as I myself am concerned, I think the 

 work will be all the more attractive because not exactly what we first 

 conceived it. 



A few broad considerations may make the point clearer. Let us. 

 in the first place, reflect where the forestry that chiefly fills the books 

 came from. It came over from Germany, the most autocratic countr>^ 

 in the modern civilized world. Further, it started about a hundred 

 years ago when that country was commercially isolated and shut in, by 

 a people at that time set on the idea of national self-sufficiency and 

 regulated order. How different our own circumstances and aspira- 

 tions at the present time ! We are between two oceans. We are com- 

 mercially ambitious and expanding. South of us are countries hos- 

 pitable to industrial development, and among others vast forest re- 

 sources of certain kinds are there. North of us on our western border 

 is British Columbia with a great forest resource and a people pressing 

 it to development. Across the Pacific, in northern Asia, are untouched 

 forests of a reported vast extent. The world is small these days ; its 

 utilities are being searched out and through transportation put at the 

 service of widely separated populations. We may regret this, think 

 each country should be sufficient to itself, according to the German 

 \dea. I won't pass on that question, but I remember that twenty years 

 ago this very year, when I first visited that country to see what I 

 could learn from their forestry, I had the feeling that those Germans 

 held too tight a rein over themselves for real men to thrive under ; a 

 lot of their practices seemed to me pedantic; and I will say this further 

 in connection with events now transpiring that I think we might 

 ourselves have blown up before this time if we had no more varied, 

 original and interesting work to do than that of a German forest officer. 



Application to various activities at home may further clear the 

 matter. Take investigation to begin with. No understanding man 

 fails to believe in the value of true scientific research that determines 



