NATIONAL AFFORESTATION 



workmen has been brought forward as the 

 most serious drawback to the scheme, but 

 personally, having had to deal with such cases, 

 1 can see no insuperable difficulty; and surely, 

 if our railway and water companies, as also 

 private landowners, can deal with hundreds 

 of men in remote mountain districts that are 

 far removed from road and rail, the Govern- 

 ment could arrange the necessary for the 

 various bodies of workmen that would be 

 employed in afforesting purposes. Nor must 

 tree-planting be considered as a new departure 

 of unemployed labour, as in the formation of 

 a large plantation on a dreary, exposed hill- 

 side in Wales the whole of the work, including 

 clearing the ground of rough surface growth, 

 draining, pitting and planting, was most 

 successfully carried out by detachments of the 

 unemployed under my personal supervision. 



The general physique of Army and Navy 

 men, and the discipline and hard work to 

 which they have been subjected during the war, 

 render them peculiarly suitable for carrying out 

 the various operations connected with the for- 

 mation of plantations. Convalescent soldiers 



