DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 175 



come before them practical men, who know all the 

 facts, and who know whereof they speak. I have 

 in mind a celebrated case wherein an international 

 fishery commission sent to Congress a wrong con- 

 clusion. Three hard-handed fishermen of Put-in- 

 Bay journeyed down to Washington, taking with 

 them a pail of water, three live fish and a section of 

 fish-net. With that simple outfit in a five-minute 

 demonstration before a Congressional committee 

 they upset forever the unwise conclusions of an 

 international commission, and the whole subject 

 was reopened on a new basis. 



It is impossible for me to state with sufficient 

 emphasis the necessity for immediate action and 

 quick results in the saving of wild life. The assaults 

 that are being made on the forests of the United 

 States are in no way comparable with it. At one 

 swoop the creation of vast national forest reserves 

 arrests the hands of the timber destroyer; but there 

 are no such corresponding reserved areas for wild 

 life. Beside the vast extent of the reserved forests, 

 the national parks and game-preserves are lost in 

 utter insignificance. 



Already a great amount of basic educational 

 work for wild life has been done. There are few 

 intelligent persons to whom the subject is new. The 

 public mind now is so sensitive to impressions 

 regarding wild life it is possible to secure, by a few 

 months of effort, results that even five years ago 

 were wildly impossible. Our task to-day is not the 



