OUR NATIONAL ESTATE 15 



life laws and refuges, and especially the recent bitter 

 war for National Park standards, made that a na- 

 tional policy. Because they are the property of all 

 the people, these lands are by common consent the 

 particular battle-ground of conflicting policies. 

 Here are now evolving the fate of our remnant of 

 wild bird and wild animal life. Here will work out 

 the answer to the question whether we shall carry 

 down to posterity a few distinguished examples of 

 our noble original wilderness as God made it. 



Federal Lands have developed a very large spe- 

 cial literature, largely economic. Problems in for- 

 estry, reclamation, mining and many other depart- 

 ments of the subject are set forth in numberless vol- 

 umes, essays and reports. Books on exploration, 

 travel and sports are also many. But little can be 

 found bearing popularly on the subject as a whole 

 which is the purpose of this book, and on the inter- 

 relation of its many subdivisions. No such consid- 

 eration is possible to-day without giving motoring 

 and nature conservation their due place with eco- 

 nomics in the picture of the whole. 



For many reasons, then, the national gaze to- 

 day centres upon the remnant of what once included 

 practically all our country from ocean to ocean a 

 small remainder compared even with the wilderness 

 of the sixties, but vastly greater in recognizable 

 values. It is to study it a little, to estimate profits 

 whose kinds had not been conceived then, to get it 

 into perspective with the developments around it, 



