CdUddian Forcslrij Journal, Xuvcinher, 1918 



193: 



used to reinforce the English labour- 

 ers. The Belgians, however, did not 

 prove very satisfactory, and they 

 were supplanted after a time by 

 Portugese, who certainly gave better 

 results. 



Then came the scheme for utilizing 

 skilled Canadian lumbermen, who 

 were enlisted as soldiers and 

 brought over to grapple ^^'ith our 

 wood-supply pro])lem. The men were 

 formed into companies consisting 

 of 175 men, and each company was 

 perfectly equipped to tackle any 

 work allotted to it, having its own 

 railway and rolling stock, its steam- 

 saw-mill, horses, and motor-lorries — 

 in fact, everything for getting trees 

 quickly from the forest to the consum- 

 er. 



At the present moment the Cana- 

 dian Forestry Corps musters 7,000 

 men, who are scattered up and down 

 the country in forty picturesque 

 lumber camps. These men are per- 

 forming wonders; their general organ- 

 ization and their methods of handling 

 trees are a delight to behold, and call 

 for the highest commendation, and 

 their camps have the true Cana- 

 dian touch about them, the huts 

 being built of split logs, just as they 

 are in the backwoods. 



You have only to journey over 

 the countryside to see the inroads 

 they are making on our woods. The 

 famous pine-woods of Surrey are 

 being wiped out of existence, and 

 many of those beautiful spots so near 

 and dear to Londoners may ultimate- 

 ly disappar owing to the urgent 

 call for timber. Whole stretches of 

 what were recently pine-clad slopes 

 have been denuded, and by the end 

 of the war it is doubtful if there will 

 be a single pine of usable size standing 

 in the United Kingdom. The ash 

 too, is faUing all over the country, for 

 it is this tree that supplies most of 

 the wood for our aeroplanes. It is 

 reassuring to know we shall have 

 enough ash to supply all our needs, 

 but there will be little to spare and 

 very few sizeable ash-trees unfelled 

 by the time we have beaten the 

 Germans. 



As some indication of how our 



woods are being eaten up, it may sur- 

 prise many to know that the Xew 

 Forest and Windsor Forest alone 

 have supplied three and a half 

 million cubic feet of pine and a hun- 

 dred thousand tons of pit-props. 

 Very shortly the woods of the United 

 Kingdom will be supplying us with 

 timber at the rate of 500,000 tons a 

 month, or 6,000,000 tens a year! 

 Even then the demand will be greater 

 than the supply; but thanks to our 

 good luck in having been able to 

 import timber for so long, we shall 

 be able to pull through, whereas if 

 we had been compelled to cut down 

 our forests on the present extensive 

 scale at the beginning of the war, 

 they would have been exhausted 

 long ago, and we should have been 

 unable to carry on. 



We are only just beginning to 

 realise the vital importance of forests 

 to our national existence and to the 

 existence of the British Empire. We 

 have been in the habit of thinking 

 that our extensive coal-fields made 

 us independent. Far from it, for we 

 must have pit props in order to work 

 our mines, and if pit timber gives out 

 and we have to close our mines, then 

 our whole industry crumbles. Our 

 national existence depends upon coal, 

 which in turn depends upon wood; so 

 if wood fails everything fails, for we 

 have no water-power to draw upon 

 like the Scandinavian countries, no 

 oil-power — no power but the heat 

 which we get from the coal. 



These are the unpleasant facts we 

 have to face. The War Office is 

 using 5,000 acres of timber a month, 

 and very little is being done in the 

 way of replanting these cut-down 

 woods. If we were to let the matter 

 rest as it is, our future national exis- 

 tence would be jeopardized. It is 

 imperative that we start to create 

 State forests, and that without delay. 

 Municipal and private enterprise in 

 afforestation must be encouraged. 

 We must have extensive new woods, 

 or else perish. 



For thirty or forty years past the 

 apathy shown by succeeding Govern- 

 ments to the question of forestry has 

 been very reprehensible. Various 



