THE NEW ITALIAN FOREST POLICY 151 



sound basis; otherwise, it is useless to deceive ourselves if the criteria of 

 unsound forest administration followed in Italy up to the present be con- 

 tinued, any forest policy or action whatever is foredoomed to certain failure, 

 being in antagonism with the very essence of national economy. 



NEED OP NATIONAL POLICY 



In fact, also for Italy, a policy which recognizes and promotes the 

 economic importance of the forest is the only concrete, truly national policy. 



This is the fruitful principle of every sound forest policy, in Germany, 

 Austria, Switzerland, Rusia, India, Japan, Australia, and let us hope also in 

 America; and we must adopt it in Italy also, following the Scandinavian, 

 English and Australian example and the strenuous defenders of the forests in 

 America, if we wish to reconstitute a productive and permanent forest 

 wealth. We must preserve and develop this wasted forest wealth of ours by 

 means of rational utilization, if we do not wish to suffer one of these days 

 from the threatened scarcity of wood which is already pressing upon us. 



Dr. Fernow, in his suggestive and learned History of Sylviculture, thus 

 briefly denned (1) the reasons of Italian forest impotence: 



"The difficulty of determining what is and what is not necessary to re- 

 forest, what is and what is not absolute forest soil make ostensibly the great- 

 est trouble and occasioned delay, but financial incapacity and political influ- 

 ences bidding for popularity are probably the main cause of the inefficiency." 



But at the first Great Italian Forest Congress which brought together in 

 June, 1909, at Bologna, under the patronage and with the strong interest of 

 H. M. the King of Italy, all the highest personages of the political, agricul- 

 tural and economic worlds of the Italian Nation, the principle of the positive 

 intervention of the State was proclaimed for the first time in Italy, and 

 crystallized in the following vote, proposed by the Minister of State, Hon. 

 Luzzatti : 



"The Congress decides that in conjunction with all the prohibitive and 

 limitative bonds must be associated a positive policy of the State, which has 

 up to the present been lacking." 



A STATE FOREST LANDS ENTERPRISE 



And it was as a matter of fact in actuation of the vote of the Bologna 

 Congress, which found a wide echo in Parliament and in the country, that 

 the law entitled "Provisions for the State Forest Lands and the Guarding 

 and Encouragement of Sylviculture," was passed in June, 1910, by the Cham- 

 ber and Senate. This law, which materialized the vote of the Forest Con- 

 gress of Bologna, has as its main object the creation of a State Forest Lands 

 Enterprise, instituted under the form of an autonomous undertaking, for the 

 purpose of "providing, by means, of the amplification and inalienability of 

 State forest property and by giving the example of a good industrial regimen, 

 for the increment of sylviculture and the commerce in national forest products" 

 (Art. 9). 



