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I AMERICAN FORESTRY I 



VOL. XXIV 



APRIL, 1918 



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"KEEP THE FOOD COMING' 



BY CHARLES LATHROP PACK 



PRESIDENT, NATIONAL WAR GARDEN COMMISSION 



NO. 292 



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,,~7~ EEP the food coming!" 



(,< * IV^ That is the message which General Pershing 

 recently flashed from the other side to the peo- 

 ple of America. 



War gardeners of the United States, that is the call to 

 you from the man who is charged with the care of all your 

 sons, brothers, friends and fellow-countrymen who are 

 now in France fighting and sacrificing that you may be safe 

 and that the world may be made a decent place to live in. 



This is the day of big 

 things. We look out upon 

 the world and everything 

 seems to be done on a 

 colossal scale. Money is 

 appropriated by the bil- 

 lions, and figures which a 

 few years ago would have 

 staggered the imagination 

 are now spoken of as light- 

 ly and as unconcernedly as 

 were hundreds and thou- 

 sands formerly. 



At the same time this is 

 still the day of small things 

 also. It is by the aggre- 

 gate of tiny sums that the 

 vast totals are made up. It 

 is by the small Thrift 

 Stamps the "baby bonds" 

 that the government is 

 gathering many of the mil- 

 lions which are needed to 

 carry on the war. The 

 pennies which are collected 

 daily at the moving picture 

 houses and through hun- 

 dreds of other apparently 

 insignificant sources are 

 helping to swell into deep, 

 wide golden streams the 

 trickling rivulets of money. 

 Small donations make up 

 most of the millions which 

 are raised by the Red 

 Cross, the Y. M. C. A. and 

 other organizations for 

 their great war work. 



"PLANTING FOR THE FLAG" 



This is the "headquarters at the front" in the war garden campaign of 

 the General Electric Co. at Schnectady, N. Y. Similarly the Amen- 

 can flag is flying in spirit, if not in reality, over every spot in back yard 

 or vacant lot where home "soldiers of the soil" are producing the food 

 which is essential to victory. "Food Must Follow the Flag." 



The same is true of war gardens. Each one is small. 

 But when they are gathered together they have the force 

 of a Niagara. Standing by the side of that resistless 

 waterfall it is difficult to realize that it is made up of 

 tiny drops. 



"Papa, why should I save a slice of bacon ? It cannot 

 feed an army," said a little girl to her father. 



Then he took her down to the waterfront and showed 

 her six big ocean-going vessels which were lying there. 



"Dorothy," he said, "do 

 you know that if every lit- 

 tle school girl in the United 

 States were to save one 

 slice of bacon a day, it 

 would fill all of those ships 

 with food for the American 

 soldiers in France?" 



"And after that," said 

 the father in telling the 

 story afterwards, "I had 

 trouble in making her eat 

 anything." 



That is the spirit in 

 which the people of Amer- 

 ica have gone into the 

 home food production 

 work. Every member of 

 the vast army of soldiers 

 of the soil recognizes that 

 his or her share, no matter 

 how small, is just as im- 

 portant as if it were big 

 enough to feed the whole 

 army. 



It has been estimated on 

 a conservative basis that 

 five million war gardeners 

 can raise enough food to 

 supply an army of 1,000,- 

 000 men for eight months. 

 When it is considered that 

 each soldier gets four and 

 a quarter pounds a day, 

 which means 4,250,000 

 pounds for 1,000,000 men 

 and what this would total 

 in eight months, some idea 



195 



