ROOSEVELT'S PART IN FORESTRY 



By Dr. Gifford Pincfiot 



Instead of a formal article from me describing in a balanced way- 

 President Roosevelt's service to forestry, will you accept this dis- 

 cursive letter, which neither surrounds the subject nor lays 

 measured stress upon its different parts, but just talks about the 

 man and the leader whom we all loved. Just at the moment I am 

 deep in an effort to defend the Roosevelt policies as to coal, oil, 

 and phosphate, and that comes first. 



Some men belong to all people and all time. I suppose it is 

 true that Theodore Roosevelt was loved and trusted by more men 

 and women in more lands during his lifetime than any other man 

 who ever lived. Certainly more men and women followed him in 

 spirit to the grave than ever did the like before for any other man 

 in human history. 



Very much of the work that Roosevelt started is yet unfinished. 

 As his great soul goes marching on, we know that at the very heart 

 of the goal to which it marches is that greatest of Roosevelt policies 

 — the planned and orderly development and conservation of the 

 natural resources of America — by no means forgetting the forest, 

 which in a true sense in the mother of all the rest. 



No matter how or where you touched him, you could not long 

 delay in finding that Roosevelt, was an outdoor man. Gifted in 

 the highest degree with the forester's master qualities of hardiness, 

 judgment, self-control, and the power of observation, Roosevelt 

 brought with him to the White House so deep a sympathy with 

 the foresters' viewpoint that it gave color and direction to all he 

 did touching the great central problem of conservation. 



There was no forester but would have liked to have him on the 

 hardest of his trips. There was no time when his mind was not 

 alert for the protection and advancement of the forests. His 

 sympathy with foresters as such was well shown when he broke 

 all presidential precedents to attend, at a private house, a meeting 

 of the Society of American Foresters, to address its members and 

 to meet them all personally. 



Roosevelt's sympathy with forests and his genius for admin- 

 istration made him from the first an active and powerful supporter 



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