1692 



Canadian Forestry Journal, May, 1918 



repair. It is mostly privately ONvned, 

 but private endeavor by the impover- 

 ished owners will prove entirely inade- 

 (|uate to undertake the work of res- 

 toration. There is little doubt that 

 State aid will be needed. 



Xot only outside the war zone in 

 France, but in Great Britain, the 

 woodsman's ax has been busy cutting 

 available supplies for war purposes. 

 That in this cutting Canadian and 

 American lumberjacks have been 

 largely employed may be assumed to 

 have made for efficiency in operation, 

 but it may also have been secured at 

 the expense of all silvicultural con- 

 siderations. Many a forest managed 

 under a natural regeneration system 

 will have been cut without regard 

 to the needs of reproduction, and 

 French foresters will for many years 

 to come find difficulties in returning 

 to a sustained-yield management, 

 which has been deranged by prema- 

 ture harvests. 



The magnificent fir forests of the 

 Vosges and Jura Mountains, the show 

 pieces of French foresters, managed 

 in selection forest, are being disman- 

 tled without regard to reproduction 

 and with the maximum of damage to 

 young growth. 



Effect in Britain 



In Great Britain the utilization of 

 home-grown timber on a large scale 

 will have waked up the people to the 

 possibilities of increasing its produc- 

 tion, and we may confidently expect 

 a more serious effort on the part of the 

 Government to inaugurate a forest 

 policy which will encourage private 

 endeavor to replace the cut planta- 

 tions and for the Government to 

 attempt the ambitious pre-war 

 schemes of wholesale afforestation of 

 waste lands. 



The British Empire Resources De- 

 velopment Committee bids fair to out- 

 last the war and become a part of the 

 Reconstruction Committee, which has 

 begun its work. 



While in our country these more or 

 less direct war influences are not felt 

 lo a great degree, yet there is one 

 development which has no direct bear- 

 ing on forests and forestry, but prom- 

 ises to be of the highest importance in 



the develo])ment of forest policies; it 

 is the development of socialistic tend- 

 encies. 



Xationalizinij Industry 



We are learning rapidly that gov- 

 ernment is a tool which 'can be made 

 efficient, and we are learning to realize 

 community interests as superior to 

 individual interests. The extension 

 of government functions has grown 

 marvelously in all belligerent coun- 

 tries, so that Bellamy's description of 

 the communistic state is not any more 

 so Utopian as it was when first pub- 

 lished, forty years ago. 



The States that have gone perhaps 

 farthest in nationalizing industries are 

 the Australians. 



In New South Wales not only are 

 railroads and coal mines operated 

 by Government, but woolen mills, 

 cement, and even harness factories. 



West Australia adds brickyards and 

 quarries, sawmills and steamships, 

 hotels and laundries, agricultural im- 

 plements, and now even retail baker- 

 ies, butcher shops, and fish markets. 

 The Ontario Government has under- 

 taken at least the last enterprise, 

 namely, to furnish fish at reasonable 

 prices. 



Under the influence of the Farmers' 

 Nonpartisan League, the North Da- 

 kota legislature has gone so far as 

 to declare for the principle that the 

 Slate may enter upon any manufac- 

 turing or industrial field, and has 

 taken up first State ownership of 

 flour mills and grain elevators. 



These socialistic developments have 

 not altogether been merely dictated 

 by war needs, but are bona fide 

 changes of attitude toward private 

 enterprise. We may, to be sure, not 

 claim so much for the many Govern- 

 ment activities which the belligerent 

 countries, including the United States, 

 have developed as war measures. 



Congress itself has become . more 

 and more an exponent of Government 

 ownership and control, with a tend- 

 ency to State socialism. As Mr. 

 Mann declares: "We are undergoing 

 the greatest revolution in government 

 which this country has ever seen." 



After the war, to be sure, a formid- 

 able reaction may set in and we may 



