FRENCH FORESTS IN THE WAR 



THE forests of France have suffered terrific destruc- 

 tion in this war, and the price they have paid and 

 their possible rehabilitation is the subject of an 

 article in Le Matin, recently discussed in The Christian 

 Science Monitor. The annual consumption of wood in 

 France, in times of peace, amounted in all to 12,000,000 

 cubic feet, 4,000,000 of which came from other countries. 



French soil is so fruitful that forests have been cut 

 down to make room for wheat. The danger became 

 apparent in the Sixteenth Century and protests were 

 raised on the matter by Bernard Palissy. Two centuries 

 later Bremontier made a forest in Gascony with the 

 object of fixing the sand dunes, and this is the largest 

 forest in France at the present time. The foundation of 

 the school of Nancy in 1824, and three years later the 

 drawing up of the forestry code were factors which made 

 for an increase in the woods of France. 



Just before the war, the forests of the state and those 

 belonging to the communes and public institutions amount- 

 ed to about 3,115,000 hectares which were administered 

 according to the code of 1827; there were, however, 

 6,000,000 hectares of wooded country in private hands 

 which were subject to no supervision. At this time the 

 afforested area in France amounted to 17 per cent of the 

 whole territory, to 20 per cent in Switzerland, 26 per 

 cent in Germany, 33 per cent in Austria-Hungary, 40 per 

 cent in Russia, 48 per cent in Sweden, and 53 per cent 

 in Scotland and Ireland. 



The result of the reassessment of the afforested areas 

 after the war will, the writer thinks, be sufficiently sad. 

 The forest of the Ardennes has suffered badly, that of 

 Artois is destroyed, the fruit trees of the Nord and the 

 Aisne have been torn up ; a great part of the beauty and 

 wealth of France ruined by the passage of the barbarians. 

 In other parts matters are bad enough but not so bad. 

 The forest of Argonne has suffered in the north from the 

 battles and in the south from the necessities of the armies. 

 All the woods which border on the front, in Champagne, 

 the Isle-de-France, the Vosges, and elsewhere have had 

 great inroads made upon them, for the front seems to 

 eat up wood which is needed there for all kinds and pur- 

 poses. In the interior of the country, the same sacrifice 

 has been going on. In other times Germany and Austria 

 sent wood to France, and now, for lack of freightage, 

 neither Scandinavia nor Canada send either deal or wood 

 pulp, and the scarcity of coal leads to the consumption 



of wood in the household fires. The vast forests of 

 Burgundy, and the great chestnut woods of Auvergne 

 are being thinned, and the pines are falling in the Jura 

 and Bugey and the Landes, while the cork woods of 

 Province are being cut down. 



The high price paid for wood is another factor in 

 bringing about the trees' downfall, and a law has been 

 passed to protect the olive trees of the South as well as 

 the precious mulberry trees. The demand for wood will 

 be even greater in the post-war period, the writer main- 

 tains, for then reconstruction will be going on. Fourteen 

 million cubic meters will be needed of which barely 

 6,000,000 will be supplied by the French forests, and 

 the remainder, if it is bought from other countries at 

 the reasonable price of 200 francs, would require an 

 annual output of a milliard and a half. 



In such a situation attention is turned toward the inex- 

 haustible forests of the colonies : Indo-China, Madagas- 

 car, Guyane, the ivory coast, and above all Gabon, pos- 

 sesses a vast wealth of trees as beautiful as they are 

 varied. France's colonial possessions can, as a whole, 

 supply her with 50,000,000 hectares of forests. These 

 will be made use of and attention is already being given 

 to the matter.. The minister for the colonies is asking 

 for a credit of 40,000,000 francs in order to begin the 

 exploitation of these woods and to export them to France. 

 Therefore, the writer declares, thanks to her colonial 

 brother, the French trees will be able to have a time of 

 rest after the war, during which so much has been asked 

 of her. Help must be given to her, too, to regain her 

 former position. 



In France there are 6,000,000 hectares of uncultivated 

 land. The state is slowly re-afforesting those which be- 

 long to it and the forest department has transformed en- 

 tire regions in the mountains, but owing to various causes 

 what is gained in one place is lost in another. Colbert 

 said that France would perish for lack of wood, but he 

 had reckoned without her forester. If Bremontier plant- 

 ed pines in the shifting sands, they have made black 

 pines, beeches, and oaks grow on the bare granite, and 

 other kinds of trees on the marshes. They have already 

 done much and in the future they will make new con- 

 quests, for as the Convention said : "Upon the preser- 

 vation of the forests depends the success of agriculture, 

 commerce, manufacture, and the arts, the navy, naviga- 

 tion in the interior, all the conveniences of our existence." 



THE GIANT "GENERAL GRANT" 



A NATIONAL park containing only four square miles, hundred and sixty-four feet high. It is not far from 



and created to protect only one tree is the General four thousand years old. 



Grant which, except for two small national reserva- The one living thing that is bigger and older is the 



tions made for the conservation of curative springs, is General Sherman tree in the Sequoia National Park, a 



the smallest national reservation in the country. Iew miles to the east. That is a foot and a half thicker 



But the General Grant tree is worth a national park and sixteen feet higher, 



all to itself. It is a riant ^m, a ,i ~* : T he General Grant tree is not the only sequoia in the 



is a giant sequoia, and next to one, is 

 the biggest and oldest living tree in the wide world. 



little national park, however. It is the biggest of a pine 

 grove of sequoia trees. Small though the park is, last 



It is thirty-five feet through from bark to bark, and two year, more than 17,000 people visited it 



7J0 



