384 APPENDIX 



tion a veritable social crime. It is the ruination of the mountaineer. . . . More- 

 over, the man that deforests assassinates the plain. The damage is far reaching. . . . 

 The waterfall which directs our turbines and produces the power for heat and light 

 may be done away with and rendered useless by deforestation. If you kill the forest, 

 you kill the brook which is the friend of mechanics. Thanks to electricity. . . . 

 water has become (as the ancients said) the most precious of gifts. ... By enor- 

 mous dams, engineers have hoped to avoid the terrible results of deforestation. . . . 

 How much inferior is this inert masonry, limited to a single valley, in comparison with 

 the strength and value of forests, living, supple, growing forever, which cover the valleys 

 as they do the plain. Free accumulator of water, ideal, green, cool, which man removes 

 and cuts like grain! In every deforested basin, the difference between the low-water 

 mark and the flood waters is formidable. For example, in the Loire, the Cheliff, the 

 Seybouze, the Vidourle, the Verdon, it is 900, 1,500, 6,600, 1,500, and 2,000,000 times 

 the ordinary flow. The flow of the Ardeche is usually reduced to 6.5 cubic yards, 

 whereas it sometimes amounts to 10,500, when it has the size of a Mississippi, or an 

 Orinoco, or a Danube. The flood that comes with the rapidity of a galloping horse 

 and throws into the Rhone such a volume of water that the flood level rises 16.4 feet. 

 If there is no stand of trees to stop the erosion of storm floods, every deluge ravages 

 slopes all the way to the plain. . . . The damage done by the Garonne means an 

 annual loss of $1,544,000. This same amount spent only once, but properly applied, 

 that is to say for reforestation in the Pyrenees, would permit the suppression of every 

 cause of the damage. . . . One now commences to realize that the forest is a two- 

 faced army to fight for or against water. The same water which is not stored by the 

 forest may be transformed to mechanical energy or ... may suddenly pre- 

 cipitate itself in a formidable, devastating mass. The impoverishment of the world, 

 erosion, the transport from the mountain to the sea, the frightful loss of water . . . 

 the forest alone can stop it. . . . Deprived of their cover of wood or of grass, the 

 slopes erode, waste away, and fall in ruins. On the forested slopes, on the contrary, 

 everything remains. The roots fix the humus to the rocks. Everywhere the forested 

 mountain changes a foolish water into a wise one. It renders the typhoon inoffensive 

 by dividing up its floods and distributing its monstrous mass in millions of drops which 

 flow slowly over the old surface of the earth. We must then recognize that the water 

 being everything and life being impossible without it, the tree which holds the water 

 is everything itself. If the forest was held sacred by religion, it should be held still 

 more sacred by reason of its social necessity. To plant a tree is to accomplish a good 

 deed, to create a forest is to enrich the country by a conquest which does not cause a 

 tear or shed a drop of blood. 



" Economic Role Utility of Wood. From the beginning of the world wood has 

 been a prime necessity. The prehistoric people lived in the forest and on the forest. 

 Coal, gas, and electricity have modified the use of wood but without abolishing or 

 diminishing the demand. Imagine the enormous volume used by the thousands of 

 trades which must have wood products for the innumerable objects manufactured, 

 from the great steamship to the little doll. Alone, paper mills could devour all the 

 forests of the world and only to assure the printing of 70,000 newspapers of 200 volumes 

 which are published daily. For France alone it represents the annual production of 

 1,235,000 acres of high forest. The coal mines use each year 24,000,000 cubic meters 

 (about 5 million thousand feet board measure) in their galleries, about nine and a half 

 times the volume of the greatest pyramid in Egypt. Finally the world uses more wood 

 than it produces. The excess of use over normal increase is about 2,620,000 tons per 

 year. The deficit is momentarily made up by the destruction of forests. It is an 

 expedient of which the fallacy is clear. A dearth of timber menaces us. Our country 



