*'NOT A FORESTRY NATION'* 217 



We are not a forestry nation. For instance, how 

 many of us have ever given a thought to where the 

 common wooden articles of the household come from ? 

 It would probably be a puzzle for many housewives 

 to say where the bundle of firewood, the ordinary 

 kindling, comes from ; how it is grown ; or how it 

 gets into the form they commonly know it by ! And 

 if difficulty is experienced in furnishing a solution to 

 this simple conundrum, the more difficult ones in 

 connection with our timber imports, on which this 

 enormous sum of £42,000,000 annually leaves the 

 country, may well be looked upon as insoluble by the 

 average woman or man. 



Now though we are not a forestry nation in that we 

 do not grow the materials we require, before the war 

 we imported about half the total forestry imports of 

 the world and the British timber markets ruled those 

 of the world. All imports, mind you ! What we grow 

 in these islands was a negligible factor on the market 

 in pre-war days. And yet we have millions of acres of 

 waste land — ^land which if planted would maintain a 

 very considerable population on the soil, a population 

 which previous to the war was, as we all know, emigrat- 

 ing in hundreds and thousands. 



I may be told that woods, the maintenance of woods 

 managed commercially, do not employ as much labour 

 as agriculture. Granted. They do not in the actual 

 working. But there is no idea of planting up agricul- 

 tural lands. The miUions of afforestable land in this 

 country are worthless from an agricultural point of 

 view, and no outlay of capital could make them a 

 paying concern agriculturally. 



