THE VITAL TRUTH 



Stewart Edward White, the noted writer of camping and outdoor 

 stories, lives in Santa Barbara. Even his honeymoon was spent in the 

 open, on a horseback trip through the high Sierras round Mount Whit- 

 ney. He has written a fine article for the American Magazine under 

 the caption "The Fight for the Forests," from which the following 

 is extracted, by permission. 



* ' "When a man makes his camp in the wilderness he hunts first of all 

 two requisites. If they exist in abundance, he is happy and comfort- 

 able ; if they lack, he must take his rest, and move on to more favored 

 localities. These two requisites are wood and water. 



And, curiously enough, these two necessities of man's abiding de- 

 pend absolutely one on the other. Without rainfall the forests will 

 not grow. Without the forests the rainfall is destructive, rather than 

 beneficent. In a naked country whether artificially or naturally so 

 the water comes in great torrential floods followed by droughts. A 

 covering of forest, on the other hand, retains the rainfall as would a 

 sponge, distributing it slowly through regulated streams, holding it 

 back against the needs of the dry season. Wherever the forests have 

 been cut away, we are treated each spring to destructive floods, as has 

 been many times proven in the valleys of those great rivers draining 

 the sites of the old pine forests in the East. Contrariwise, in Cali- 

 fornia, where the necessities of irrigation cause the people to pay 

 great attention to such matters, it has been found by actual measure- 

 ment that the stream-flow has increased twenty-five per cent since the 

 establishment of efficient protection for the forest cover. 



Since these things are so, it follows naturally that sooner or later 

 nations would see through the haze of immediate expediency to the 

 vital truth, forced home boldly on the individual camper. 



From this realization would come a system of forestry. 



In Switzerland we find the earliest intelligent treatment of the 

 question. Switzerland's mountainous situation would have rendered 

 her peculiarly liable to complete extinction by flood, avalanche and 

 the erosion of the agricultural soil, once the natural protection was 

 removed. But today Switzerland is prosperous and very much alive. 

 Over one thousand years ago she possessed a forest system, and had 

 developed scientific forestry by the fifteenth century. As early as 

 Louis XIV, France awoke to the fact that her forests and her life 

 were draining away together. But it was too late. Today she is spend- 

 ing $34 an acre to reforest her watersheds. The same experience is 

 costing Italy $200 an acre. Italy is not a wealthy nation; yet she is 

 appropriating cheerfully this enormous sum in the realization that on 

 it depends the question as to whether or not she will have to strike 

 her tents. If we of the United States were called upon to replace at 

 even Italy's figure the trees not growing on the watersheds protected 

 by our reserves, we should have to spend about three billion dollars! 



Only a few years ago the forest was our enemy here in America. 

 Every step of the way must be cleared by the pioneer's axe and guard- 

 ed by his rifle. A tree was a foe to be gotten rid of as expeditiously as 

 possible. To ingrained and inherited hostility succeeded indifference, 



