FRENCH VIEW OF AMERICAN OPERATIONS 355 



foresters were quick to appreciate how little their conceptions of sound 

 forestry practice had yielded to the urgent demands of the war. We 

 could but respect this vigorous assertion of the national instinct for forest 

 conservation in the face of a world-wide emergency, although at times it 

 appeared to be carried farther than a vigorous and effective prosecution 

 of the war should permit. The American officers endeavored consist- 

 ently to meet the French foresters on their own ground, and to under- 

 stand and work in harmony with their technical requirements. This 

 was indeed the attitude of the operation commanders and of the rank 

 and file of the forestry troops to a remarkable degree, considering how 

 foreign the French forestry viewpoint was to their past experience and 

 habits of thought as lumbermen. The French foresters thus acquired 

 a large measure of confidence in the American engineers at work in their 

 woods, a fact which proved to be of great benefit to the Forestry Section 

 in the long run. 



The French View of American Operations. As a matter of fact the 

 French made practically no serious criticisms of the American cuttings 

 as far as compliance with forestry requirements was concerned. The 

 common sense and practical understanding of the situation on the part 

 of the average French forester made many requirements less burden- 

 some in practice than they threatened to be in the formal contract. 

 The criticism of the French was directed chiefly against the American 

 methods of utilizing timber, particularly the 7 and 9 gauge circular 

 saws with which our mills were equipped. Accustomed for centuries 

 to the closest possible utilization of valuable timber, with human labor 

 and rate of production wholly secondary considerations, and to the use 

 of narrow bandsaws of a thinness approached only in light work in 

 planing-mills or wood-working factories in the United States, the wide 

 kerf eaten out of the logs by the heavy American circular saws was 

 anathema to the thrifty French. Nor were they convinced by the 

 American argument that heavy equipment was necessary to stand up 

 under the continuous hard driving required to get the maximum pro- 

 duction from our mills and that the war would be won by volume of 

 output rather than a minimum of waste. 



A related question was that of the class of products cut from large, 

 high-grade timber. The State foresters could not forget how they had 

 sought from time immemorial to make the public forests of France supply 

 the clear, high-grade timbers, in large sizes, needed by her industries. 

 When an American captain under the pressure of "rush" orders cut 

 such logs into ties or scantling, as occasionally happened, the incident 

 was apt to become a subject for grave discussion by the Inspector General 

 at his monthly meeting with all the Allied forestry chiefs. The upkeep 

 of their wonderful system of forest roads and surfaced highways was 



