348 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



Congress (as their constituents grow wiser) than 

 ever in the past, and are becoming fewer every year ; 

 and friends of conservation are increasing con- 

 stantly in number, interest and courage. Our mis- 

 sion is solely public education. We fight only those 

 .whose impetuous onslaughts upon national idealism 

 in the name of localism and politics, demanding in- 

 stant satisfaction, will yield to no other persuasion 

 than the prompt emphatic negative of the popular 

 jwill. From this there can be no appeal. 



To serve faithfully during our time, unyielding 

 in defense, as Grinnell, Powell, Hough, Walcott, 

 Pinchot, Lacey, Merriam, Maxwell and Roosevelt 

 served in creation, is to play our lesser but no less 

 crucial roles in a very great drama of civilization. 

 It may be that, with to-day's nation-wide co-opera- 

 tion, we shall even see realization assured. 



As I write the concluding words of a book 

 which records the beginnings of an evolution in 

 transportation which, in a single decade, has changed 

 America and American life beyond belief, I hear the 

 ominous prophetic roar of an airplane thousands of 

 feet above my head, lost in clouds. Prophetic of 

 what? Did the honking of an automobile seem 

 prophetic in 1915? 



To several of us in Yosemite National Park 

 twelve summers ago, wondering at the slender pat- 

 ronage of a spot so marvellously beautiful in a land 

 so great and rich, the presence of adventurers by 

 automobile from distant states stirred no apprehen- 



