EFFECT OF THE WAR ON FORESTS OF FRANCE 



711 



structive genius of the Hun. Altogether about one and 

 one-quarter million acres of forest were within the terri- 

 tory occupied by Germany, including her advance of 1918. 

 There will be some salvage from these forests, but 

 mostly in the form of cordwood or other small material. 

 Formerly, each year the annual growth expressed in 

 material large enough for saw logs and cross-ties, 

 aggregated 17^4 million cubic feet, or roughly 120 mil- 

 lion board feet. The forest capital, with its power to 

 produce annual growth, was largely destroyed and will 

 have to be rebuilt through long years of patient effort. 



forward over an utterly devastated land. Where for- 

 merly the men immediately in the rear could be billeted 

 in villages, there existed no longer any villages near 

 enough for the purpose. Demountable barracks were 

 needed in vast quantities. In their absence tents had 

 to be used. With the arrival of the United States army 

 in France there were required many buildings in the 

 rear, for training camps, hospitals, storehouses and in- 

 numerable other buildings of a temporary character. 

 Great docks had to be constructed, requiring piling, 

 square timbers, and lumber in large quantities. The 



Photograph by Underwood and Underwood 



"THE DEAD HILLS OF THE MEUSE" ONCE FAIR-WOODED HILLSIDES 



In such pitiable condition have hundreds of square miles of hillside and valley been left in the land over which the German 

 vandals advanced. There were about 1,250.000 acres of forest within the territory in France occupied by Germany. Splin- 

 tered stumps and shattered trunks and limbs bear witness to the noble forests which once existed. 



Forest Depletion 

 Behind the Lines 



The depletion of France's for- 

 ests is by no means confined to the 

 fighting zone. The forests in the 

 rear, from the battle line to the 

 Pyrenees, from the coast to the Swiss border were dur- 

 ing the war filled with wood cutters feverishly bringing 

 out material for the use of the armies, for the Navy, for 

 the war industries, and for essential domestic use. 



The demands for wood materials by an army are 

 almost limitless. For barracks alone there is always 

 a call for more and more lumber, especially when as in 

 the war just ended literally millions of men were moving 



engineers had to have hundreds of thousands of cross- 

 ties for the railroads, poles for new telephone and tele- 

 graph lines, lumber and timbers for tunnels and bridges, 

 plank and logs for repairing roads, pole-wood and lum- 

 ber for trench construction, firewood for fuel, and so 

 on in a long list of varied uses of the products of the 

 forest. 



Practically all of this material for the armies of the 

 West had to come from the forests of France because 

 importations by sea were necessarily cut down to the 

 minimum on account of the need of shipping for men, 

 equipment and supplies that could not be secured locally. 



