WAR REQUIREMENTS 5 



exceptionally large demand for timber might prove 

 one of the factors to the successful waging of a 

 great war. But it is doubtful whether even the 

 German Head-Quarter Staff foresaw the gigantic 

 demand on the forest to supply the materials required 

 for trenches, light railways, and so on which this 

 war has witnessed. And even if they did realize 

 it to some extent, their argument would have been 

 that they would obtain their requirements in this 

 respect from the countries they overran ; and this 

 has been borne out by the facts, as Belgium, North 

 France, Poland, and elsewhere in the fighting areas 

 amply demonstrate. But the French we know for 

 a fact did not anticipate this enormous demand for 

 forestry materials. Even after the war had been 

 in progress for some length of time, and the great 

 shortage of wood was becoming apparent, they were 

 unwilling to sacrifice their fine forests. And the 

 effort to preserve them was a very natural and laud- 

 able one. But it could not be persisted in, and by 

 the third year of the war heavy felling had to be made 

 in their forests in the interests of the common cause. 

 What is the result of all this to us as a 

 nation ? What object lesson does it hold for us ? 

 What is the real utility of the maintenance of a 

 proportion of a nation's land under commercially 

 managed woods ? Until the answers to these ques- 

 tions are grasped by the British public ; until that 

 public is educated to the point when the man in the 

 street could give you a correct answer to such a 

 question, real progress in this forestry problem as 

 applicable to our country cannot be looked for. 



