president's address and discussion. 93 



to-day will live to see another great war, but there will come a 

 generation after us to whom this desolating struggle is only a 

 matter of history, and as long as human nature remains what 

 it is there will always be quarrels which nothing but force can 

 settle. We need not expect war, but we are bound to consider 

 the possibility of it, and to make due provision to meet it ; and 

 one obvious provision, as every one realises to-day, is a sufficient 

 supply of home-grown timber. If we were to start planting 

 to-day there would be time to cover many barren hill-sides with 

 useful woods before the next great crisis came ; but even if such 

 a crisis should never come, the policy will still be amply 

 justified by the increased wealth that it will bring to the country, 

 and by the opportunities that it will give of supplying the best 

 asset a nation can have — a healthy and vigorous population. 



"We are to have a discussion presently on some of the 

 immediate problems of afforestation in this country. It seems 

 a very opportune moment for such a discussion, for questions 

 are sure to arise as soon as afforestation is settled upon, and it 

 is very desirable that we should have clear views as to how 

 these questions are to be dealt with. It is very interesting to 

 see how this question of the timber supply is agitating other 

 parts of the British Empire besides our own. Even in countries 

 where the State has recognised its responsibility in the matter, 

 there is a feeling that something more should be done than has 

 been done hitherto. It is found that even in these States the 

 Government is none the worse for a little stimulus from public 

 opinion. We have received evidence of this quite lately from 

 the other side of the world. Australia and New Zealand have 

 both got their Forestry Departments, but in both of these 

 countries there has been a growing feeling that not enough has 

 been done in the matter. In Australia, where they have 

 suffered a good deal from shortage of timber since the war broke 

 out, a Central Forest League was founded a year or two ago to 

 keep the subject before the public eye and to see that it was not 

 neglected. I need hardly say that that Forest League has 

 received the warmest support of the Governor-General, Sir 

 Ronald Munro-Ferguson, who has done so much for silviculture 

 in this country, and who has carried his enthusiasm with 

 him to the great Dominion which he now governs. And now 

 we hear of a similar thing being done in New Zealand. The 

 fine forests of New Zealand have been so heedlessly destroyed 



