170 OUR VANISHING FORESTS 



of good roads throughout the country. That Is, if 

 any state will adopt a forest policy which seems to 

 the Secretary of Agriculture of the United States 

 proper and adequate, and if such state will author- 

 ize the expenditure of sufficient funds to carry on its 

 share of fire protection, regulation, etc., then the 

 United States Government should make available to 

 that state an equal or otherwise fixed amount. This 

 is no new principle, but its supporters maintain that 

 a broad application should avoid the undesirable 

 limitations of the Weeks Law, and that the result 

 will be slowly but surely attained. Although the 

 handicaps of competition may cause delay. It should 

 progress at least as rapidly as the people of the 

 United States are willing and ready to pay the cost. 

 In short, it involves no unpopular legislation by an 

 authority which must spend mIllion3 for enforce- 

 ment, but is a policy really self-imposed and self- 

 administered. 



Some say that cooperation Is not natural to 

 human nature, and even purport to believe that 

 when men do cooperate it is only for the temporary 

 satisfaction of a selfish aim. In a measure this is 

 true, and means will have to be found to force the 

 stragglers Into line; but we cooperated during the 

 war and united to build up from nothing a working 

 and fighting machine so great that our army was at 



