DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 187 



the raising of funds for wild-life protection. It is 

 a blood test to which only the red-blooded and the 

 high-minded ever respond. 



The greatest of all obstacles in the way of the 

 conservator of wild life and forests is the deadly 

 American spirit of restless and heedless wasteful- 

 ness. The American continent has been developed 

 by men who, time after time, settled down, robbed 

 the soil of its fertility, then moved on westward to 

 new lands. The American national spirit is for 

 quick, wasteful conquest, not calm and patient con- 

 servation. It is our way to cut down, slash up, kill, 

 lay waste, get rich quick, and a fig for posterity! 

 Our rich men strive to leave great fortunes in cash 

 to their children, but they rarely reforest or restore 

 wild life. That is too slow for them. 



The forest champions of America now are mak- 

 ing a Herculean effort to instill into the American 

 mind the idea of the systematic replanting of de- 

 nuded forest lands: but it is like rolling a huge 

 stone up a steep hill. Quite recently I journeyed 

 through several hundred miles of southern pine 

 forests, always watching for signs of systematic 

 reforestation, but not once did I see a pine, young 

 or old, that clearly appeared to have been planted 

 by the hand of man. In the denuded forest areas 

 of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, 

 nature was bravely struggling to restore what man 

 had greedily destroyed, but not once did I see a 



