Canadian Forestrij Journal, August, 1918 



1829 



istration, with all the necessary ap- 

 purtenances stocks of materials, work- 

 shops, machinery, etc. — and the duty 

 of this administration is to pro- 

 vide from the contents of the forest 

 all the various productions which 

 are necessary for the war. The long 

 entrenchment warfare demands great 

 quantities of round wood, and also 

 enormous supplies of wood manu- 

 factured in the form of fuel, char- 

 coal, wood wool, wood thread, etc. 

 Wood saves blood is the motlo, and 

 regular and plentiful supplies at 

 the front are therfore considered 

 of the very highest importance. 



War Prisoners Work 

 "It is very essential work which is 

 here being undertaken; it requires 

 skillful management and powerful 

 arms. In the Bjelovjerska forest 

 department there are about 25 wound 

 ed officers, who, with some hundreds 

 of junior officers and others of lower 

 rank, superintend the work, which 

 is performed by many thousand 

 prisoners of war and the civil popu- 

 lation of the place. The huge forest 

 which covers an area of more than 

 100,000 hectar, is divided into many 

 inspection districts. At the head 

 of each is a forest expert. To one of 

 these we drove in a hunting carriage. 

 Our lonely way led through the won- 

 derful forest, whose century-old trees 

 sheltered the soldiers of Charles VII 

 and Napoleon. Predominant are un- 

 usually straight-grown pines, yield- 

 ing a wood of excellent quality. 

 About a quarter of the whole forest 

 consists of deciduous trees, among 

 which the oak and the ash are of 

 special interest. As we drive, we 

 feel very thankful that our armies 

 have been successful in capturing 

 and using rationally these enormous 

 stretches of forest, to the great bene- 

 fit of our own native supplies, which 

 can thus be better conserved than 

 would otherwise be the case. On 

 either side of us lie felled the huge 

 giants of the forest. The branches 

 are first lopped off on the spot, and 

 the trunks are then drawn by horses 

 and oxen to the forest railway for 

 transport to the mills. To get out 

 the large trunks by cattle alone 



would be a work of great difficulty 

 and, considering the need for horses 

 for the army, would be a slow pro- 

 cess. As it is, the locomotives con- 

 vey daily hundreds of trees from the 

 forest, as well as taking the workmen 

 to the more distant parts for felling. 



Boards for Front Trenches 

 "We take one of these trains, and 

 find ourselves at a sawmill. Before 

 it is the piling place where the logs are 

 collected and sorted before being 

 sawn. For the front are especially 

 needed boards of certain dimen- 

 sions, of which 'unterstande' and 

 shelters are constructed. For this 

 purpose, and in order to utilize the 

 full capacity fo the railways, the 

 saw mills have been erected in the 

 forest. Each inspector superintends 

 one of these mills, and they are so 

 arranged that the raw material can 

 be taken in at one side and the 

 manufactured wood come out at the 

 other. Those mills which cannot 

 be established by the railway are 

 connected by sidings with the main 

 line. The saw frames are driven 

 by engines fed with wood fuel; water 

 and wood chips are the daily bread 

 of these machines, which drive not 

 only the saws, but deliver also elec- 

 tric power to the dynamos. The 

 sawmills, the piling yards, the pris- 

 oner's quarters, and the barracks of 

 the civil population are lighted by 

 electricity. 



Thousands of Workers. 

 The forest inspector who received 

 us treated us with the greatest court- 

 esy, and told us a good deal about 

 the life and work in the forest. To 

 support, in these primitive regions, 

 and to look after many thousands of 

 workmen — ^Russians, Poles, Jews, men 

 women, and children — is no light 

 task. It has been solved by quarter- 

 ing the prisoners as near to their 

 place of work as possible in small 

 camps, which have excellent sleep- 

 ing arrangements, with washing- 

 rooms, reserves of food, workshops, 

 wells, hospitals and other hygienic 

 arrangements; while, on the other 

 hand, free dwellings have been pro- 

 vided for the civil population, as well 



