REPORT OF GENERAL MEETING. 3 



urged this upon the Government, we have never been able to 

 obtain it. Under all the circumstances, the Council considered 

 that the time had come when we should make a bolder demand, 

 and we have asked for the creation of an independent Forestry 

 Department for the United Kingdom, with branches in England, 

 Scotland, and Ireland. You will observe in the Memorandum 

 that we have not abandoned our former request for a separate 

 branch of the Board of Agriculture, but we have put it in the 

 second place. We considered that an independent Forestry 

 Authority would be far more effective, and that only if there 

 were really cogent reasons against it — only in that case should 

 forestry remain under the Board of Agriculture. I may say 

 that there was no point on which the Council were more decided 

 and more unanimous than on this question of the Forest 

 Authority. Let me give you very briefly the reasons that 

 influenced us, and when you have heard them I hope you may 

 feel as clearly as we did that we were justified in the new 

 departure we have made. 



" In the first place, scarcely anything has been done for 

 forestry during the many years that it has been under the 

 Board of Agriculture. The chief cause was that the Board was 

 too busy with agricultural aflairs to have either time or money 

 to spare for forestry. But if this was the case before the war, 

 how much more will it be the case when the war is over. The 

 work of the Board has been nothing in the past compared to 

 what it is bound to be in the future. For the first time agri- 

 culture is going to be treated as an industry of national import- 

 ance, and it is to be stimulated as it has never been stimulated 

 before. Farmers are to be encouraged to grow bigger crops, 

 millions of fresh acres are to be brought under cultivation, in- 

 numerable small holdings are to be created for the benefit of 

 soldiers and sailors returning from the war, the problem of rural 

 housing, which was already serious enough before the war, will 

 be ten times more serious and more pressing when the war is 

 over. What chance would forestry have if it were left to the 

 care of a Department which had urgent problems like these 

 upon its hands? This of itself must render some change 

 necessary. 



" But if agriculture is going to claim so much more attention 

 than formerly, and to entail so much more work, the same is 

 true of forestry. The position of forestry has changed a good 



