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Canadian Forestry Journal, March, 1918 



Britain's Penalty for Neglect of Forests 



Bv Sir John Stirling-Maxwell 

 In a Recent Address before Royal Arbor {cultural Society of Scotland 



Forty Million Pounds Paid Out In Two 

 Years Might Have Been Avoided 



For ihe lasl Ihree ^•ears every one 

 engaged in the organization for war 

 has known how dearly this country is 

 paying for the neglect of a great 

 national industry, (timber produc- 

 tion). The Prime Minister has told 

 us that timber absorbs more shipping 

 than any other import, and that we 

 can only ensure imports of food by 

 foregoing imports of timber. He 

 described the situation to the House 

 of Commons "as one which undoubt- 

 edly calls for the gravest uneasiness.'" 

 We have now reached the stage when 

 the use of imported timber, except in 

 small quantities, is prohibited unless 

 it receives official sanction. Recently 

 it has been found necessary to with- 

 hold sanction even for the erection 

 of huts for the service of our soldiers 

 and munition workers. There is no 

 seasoned home-grown timber to fall 

 back on, and no time to season any. 

 The demand is too pressing. Every- 

 thing is used as it is cut. For the 

 army we are mainly dependent on the 

 French forests. Had our Allies neg- 

 lected forestry as we have done, the 

 war could not at this stage have been 

 carried on at all. I shall not waste 

 time in dwelling on what might have 

 been, but it is only fair to this Society 

 to point out that if its advice had 

 been taken, things would be very 

 different now. We should at least 

 have been secure in the vital matter of 

 pit-wood, and we should have had 

 sufficient men skilled in the con- 

 version of wood, to enable us to sur- 

 render the younger men to the army 

 without paralysing our efforts to 

 make the most of our native timber. 



Britain's Penalty, £ 40,000,000 

 One hesitates to speak of money in 

 these days when money does not seem 

 to count, but money is strength and 

 we still have to fact the bill. We had 

 the great good luck to be able to 



import timber for the first two years 

 of war, but the cost in increased price, 

 freight and insurance amounted in 

 these years to some forty millions 

 more than we need have paid for 

 home-grown timber. This money 

 might as well have been thrown into 

 the sea. A railway company, of 

 which I am a director, was paying 

 14 s. for imported sleepers, while 

 home-grown sleepers quite as good 

 were being despatched to the army in 

 France at 3s. 6d. After all, forty 

 millions is a considerable sum. A 

 tithe of that sum, wisely laid out 

 even thirty years ago, would have 

 saved most of this loss and proved a 

 good investment into the bargain. 



No Longer a Game of Chance 



How far these arguments will ba 

 strengthened by the experience of the 

 coming months, we do not know. We 

 can only pray that they may not 

 be strengthened by disaster. They 

 already suffice to convince any 

 thoughtful person that the forest 

 policy of this country can no longer 

 be left to chance. I am not only 

 thinking of war, or of those trade 

 boycotts, which will assuredly take 

 the place of war if the statesmen of 

 today succeed, where the whole world 

 has hitherto failed, in eliminating 

 force from the settlement of interna- 

 tional disputes. I am thinking scarce- 

 ly less of times of peace. Coniferous 

 timber, which composes nine-tenths 

 of our imports, is the anxiety. Should 

 Russia, on which we have latterly 

 been mainly dependent, now enter on 

 a period of development, she will 

 soon, like the United States, herself 

 absorb the whole produce oi her 

 forests. The price of timber has for 

 years been steadily rising, and the 

 time is coming when countries which 

 have no timber of their own will fare 



