248 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



or in a few years, or even decades. If we started full speed 

 ahead today, there would still be a time of privation, a time of 

 suffering from insufficient forests before these new man-caused 

 forests can reach maturity. 



It is important that we delay no longer with a program that 

 sooner or later we must inevitably carry out. The longer we 

 delay the more burdensome this program becomes. 



We, in America, talk a great deal and write a great deal 

 about making this country the most advanced nation in the 

 world. It is a worthy ambition. Directly ahead of us lies one 

 way of beginning this task. It lies in formulating and ade- 

 quately supporting a program that will balance timber growth 

 and timber use. It lies in covering again our hills with forests, 

 banishing the fire menace and cutting down waste. The way 

 is before us of creating great areas to supply our increasing 

 need for wood and for the many varied gifts the forests give. 

 It means turning millions of acres now partially or wholly 

 desolate into cool friendly woodlands that will protect our 

 streams, hold back the soil in flood time, provide pure water 

 through the drought of hot summer days, and for all time 

 furnish playgrounds for our hours of recreation. And besides 

 all this, these forests will be giving us year in, and year out, 

 that greatest of all nature's gifts wood. 



