18 BRITISH FORESTRY, PAST AND FUTURE 



While most of the land would probably be obtainable by 

 mutual agreement, the State must be provided with com- 

 pulsory powers to be used where necessary. Such powers 

 have already been obtained in connexion with the purchase 

 of home-grown timber, hay, wool, and other material, and 

 people now recognize, as they have never recognized bef ore* 

 that private rights cannot be allowed to impede national 

 interests. 



The war has shown that industries vital to national 

 security may be paralyzed if deprived of supplies of timber. 

 This applies particularly to coal mining, on which practi- 

 cally the whole of our industrial activities depend. It would 

 appear that at the end of the present war this country will 

 be practically cleared of trees that have reached usable 

 dimensions. We shall be more dependent than ever on im- 

 ported material, and it therefore behoves us unless the 

 safety of the seas can be absolutely guaranteed, which is 

 impossible to see to it that afforestation on a scale com- 

 mensurate with our requirements shall proceed directly 

 demobilization begins. This means important preliminary 

 preparations, on the consideration of which it is understood 

 that a Committee is at present engaged. Under normal 

 circumstances a planting scheme would be arranged to 

 provide a regularly graduated series of age-classes. For 

 instance, if 1,000 acres were to be afforested on a fifty 

 years' rotation, 20 acres would be planted annually, and 

 the whole completed in the fiftieth year. The fifty-first 

 year would yield a clear-felling on the first-planted 20 acres, 

 and, with immediate replanting of the felled area, the 1,000 

 acres would furnish 20 acres of timber annually, besides 

 thinnings, in perpetuity. But the national emergency 

 demands another method of procedure, for circumstances 

 are not normal, and considerations of time do not admit of 

 any such orderly sequence of age- classes. The policy, there- 

 fore, ought to be to afforest as rapidly as land can be found, 

 labour secured, and plants produced. It is unfortunate 



