Canadian Forestry Journal, February, ipi6. 



405 



Forestry and the Future 



Canada Must Wake Up to the Opportunities From Sane Forest 

 Management — Preparedness and Production. 



By R. H. Campbell, Director of Forestry. 



Two words or ideas have come 

 prominently to the front in discus- 

 sions of national affairs since the 

 war burst upon us. These words 

 are "preparedness" and "produc- 

 tion." In the years before the war 

 and in the first few months of the 

 war we were inclined to think but 

 little of the preparedness, the effi- 

 ciency, the "Kultur" of Germany, 

 but as the fierce struggle continues 

 in intensity and the strength of the 

 enemy shows no outward sign of 

 waning there has been norne in upon 

 the mind a misgiving whether the 

 British policy of muddling through 

 may not be too wasteful and dan- 

 gerous, and the conviction is forced 

 on us that the triumph of democracy 

 we feel this country is fighting for 

 will have to have infused into it 

 some of the national organization 

 and the efficiency of our chief en- 

 emy. And though we hope and 

 pray that this war may be the last of 

 its kind — so terrible, so widespread 

 — and that we may have to look to 

 a future of warfare and strife among 

 the nations, still, whether in war or 

 peace, the demand for national or- 

 ganization and efficiency will remain 

 if the varying and manifold needs of 

 the future are to be met. 



The preparedness of Germany was 

 a preparedness not only on the 

 strictly military side but in indus- 

 tries, in trade, in agriculture and in 

 the management of all her natural 

 resources, including the forests. All 

 of these were developed to a high 

 state of efficiency, they were pushed 

 to larger production by careful man- 



agement and use, and the methods of 

 development and utilization were 

 the subject of thorough and scien- 

 tific investigation. 



Forests in Europe. 



But what I wish to draw atten- 

 tion to is that the creation and man- 

 agement of forests was an integral 

 part of the programme and that the 

 modern increase in Germany and 

 other European cotintries in popula- 

 tion and indtistry has meant not the 

 destruction of the forest but an in- 

 crease of the area under forest and 

 a larger production and better utili- 

 zation. The attitude of the railway 

 station agent at Niagara, who, when 

 a European coming across from the 

 United States for a few days, asked 

 him for information as to the loca- 

 tion of the forests, replied, "This is 

 a civilized country, we have no for- 

 ests," is perhaps characteristically 

 Canadian and is indicative of our 

 thoughtlessness and immaturity. 



The following table shows for the 

 leading European countries the po- 

 pulation per square miles and the 

 percentage of the land in forest : 



Population per Percentage of 

 square mile, land in forest. 



Belgium 652 18.3 



(Germany 310.4 25.9 



Austria' 247 32.5 



Switzerland . . . 234.8 22.7 



France 189.5 18.7 



Russia (in Euro- 

 ope) 64.6 31.0 



Sweden 32.4 47.8 



Taking Belgium as an example it 

 will be seen that, although the popu- 

 lation is 650 to the square mile or 



