conviction and administrative policies are recognizing with startling 
frankness the duty of the State in managing not only armies of men, 
but the resources of the country on the most scientific far-sighted plan. 
The care of forests in every province of Canada is the direct and 
undisputed responsibility of Governments. In New Brunswick, where 
provincial ownership of the forests has effect, the Government is 
to the fullest degree the trustee and steward of the 7,500,000 acres 
of Crown Lands, largely forest covered. While the province has un- 
doubtedly followed the neglectful trend of almost all other parts of 
North America during the past fifty years, the ruin of so much of the 
forest inheritance by fire is attributable in the main, not so much to 
the various political administrations, as to a lack of public knowledge 
and concern. 
In whatever way we dispose of responsibility, the penalty must 
be faced. It is not in the desire of any good citizen to pass along 
old-fashioned mistakes unremedied. The Director of the Forest Survey 
of New Brunswick estimates that lack of adequate forest fire protection 
has, during the past forty years, resulted in the destruct’on of standing 
timber which, had it been manufactured instead of burned, would 
have represented a sale value of no less a sum than $80,000,000. In 
other words, the price of neglect is now being paid in a hampered in- 
dustrial development, reduction of employment, capital turned else- 
where and the public’s share of timber revenues cut down. 
New Brunswick’s It would appear, therefore that forest conservation 
Foundation—The js emphatically public business. While it is true that 
Forest. a larger proportion of New Brunswick's Crown Lands, 
than of other provinces except Nova Scotia, has been granted outright, 
nevertheless there remains under the Crown, 7,500,000 acres (mostly 
under license) averaging as good timber contents as are to be found in 
the province. This area, about the size of Belgium, represents, with 
farm land, the chief natural endowment of the province. It represents 
the future source of raw materials not only for the hundreds of wood- 
using industries in existence today (needing two hundred million feet of 
raw material a year for the Maritime Provinces alone,) but is the main 
hope of attracting scores of new wood-using factories, increasing em- 
ployment, developing farms, towns, and cities and providing new revenues 
for the public treasury without resort to direct taxation. 
No longer is the forest to be identified with the ‘‘wilderness.”” It 
has come to be regarded in all progressive lands as one of the most vital 
and valuable portions of the people’s estate. No longer does the farmer 
look upon tree-covered areas as necessarily impeding the progress of 
agriculture. He knows, sometimes by hard personal experience, that 
by far the greater part of New Brunswick is limited by nature to the 
growing of trees. Soil, climate, and topographic conditions together 
render more than two-thirds of all Canada unable to produce field crops. 
In Quebec, for example, out of a total area of 210 million acres, less than 
9 millions are under farm cultivation. The balance is either permanent 
barrens or must for the greater part be retained for all time under timber 
Undeveloped agricultural areas, like the Clay Belt, constitute the 
exceptions, but such areas comprise but an exceedingly small proportion 
2 
. 
