A PAYING PROPOSITION 23 



at the outbreak of war. Now it is not open to doubt 

 that the war has intensified the urgency of the affores- 

 tation question in this country. However near to 

 their former level we may be able to bring prices, the 

 tendency of the future will be an inevitable increase. 

 For years the possibility of a timber famine in Europe 

 has been discussed by experts as the probable outcome 

 of the utilisation of the accessible available supplies 

 in different parts of the world. That prices would 

 have risen in a comparatively few years even without 

 the war was a certainty. The war leaves the question 

 in no doubt. Consequently forestry, commercial 

 forestry, will be an even more paying proposition in 

 the future than would have been the case. 



And I believe all experts are convinced that far 

 from postponing the matter for any further future 

 consideration steps should be taken now to prepare 

 schemes of sufficient magnitude to ensure both suc- 

 cess and adequate supplies for posterity. As a nation 

 we are ever more wide awake in times of stress and 

 danger, and since peace failed to bring this question 

 home to us, even with the numerous Committees and 

 Royal Commissions which have sat upon it, may we 

 not hope that the stress of war and the price we are 

 paying for our fathers' dilatoriness may rouse us to its 

 great urgency ? 



Had our grandfathers, sixty to seventy years ago, 

 planted up a proportion of the waste lands of these 

 islands we should have been saved a large sum of money 

 and a great deal of anxiety during the past year and 

 three-quarters. Had our fathers planted thirty or forty 

 years ago the pitwood required for the mines would have 

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