did their share. But if he has visited Ger- 
many he cannot fail to recall that across the 
boundary only a short distance away from the 
devastated area of France stand the forests of 
Germany unscathed by the war. Whether or 
not Germany can pay her debts is not within 
the province of this letter to discuss, but tim- 
ber is certainly one form of realizable wealth 
that she does still possess. 
The forests of France where there was heavy 
fighting help one to reconstruct the picture of 
what there took place. At Amance, for instance, 
near Nancy, where fell many of the students of 
the French Forest School within a few kilome- 
ters of their former class rooms, there are 
plenty of grim reminders of the battles. Few 
of the wire entanglements have yet been re- 
moved, trenches and dugouts are as they were 
left in 1918, and in places are even the remains 
of the camouflage that helped to conceal the 
roads. Nature is doing all she can to cover the 
ity, even if it were, to attempt to describe these 
battlefields. The heroic defense of this critical 
salient through the entire war makes it indeed 
holy ground. “They shall not pass.” 
Equally is the writer unwilling to attempt to 
write of the devastation either of the cities that 
were under bombardment, or of the pathetic 
remains of the little hamlets that dot the firing 
line. Brave attempts are everywhere being 
made at reconstruction, but it will be a long, 
long time before the temporary structures of 
today—many of them constructed of the sheet 
iron used in the bomb proof dugouts—are re- 
placed by permanent houses. After visiting this 
section of France one does not wonder that the 
French want to keep up their army. It may be 
an unnecessary precaution to have as many men 
available as are now under arms (and every 
town of any size seems to have its garrison), 
but— When one has seen these things he bet- 
ter understands the French point of view. 
MATURE TREES 
READY FOR 
THE FINAL 
CUT, FULL 
REPRODUCTION 
HAVING BEEN 
SECURED— 
FOREST OF 
HEYE, NANCY 
traces, but it takes more than three years to 
obliterate such havoc. 
It is apparently the policy of the French gov- 
ernment to facilitate visits to the battlefields, 
at any rate to the more noted places as Rheims 
and its vicinity and the famous forts outside of 
Verdun. Excellent automobile roads and an 
efficiently organized touring car service make it 
possible in a short time to get a comprehensive 
idea of typical portions of the battle front. 
Most of the salvage of value has of course been 
collected; one sees great piles of it at inter- 
vals. But there is plenty left of broken and 
twisted odds and ends to enable anyone with 
even a small store of imagination to reconstruct 
the actual picture. Otherwise the policy is to 
leave this part of the front as it was. 
Around the outer forts’at Verdun, Vaux and 
Douamont, a scanty vegetation is beginning to 
come back. But the impression that one re- 
ceives can be summed up in the phrase, “the 
abomination of desolation.” This is not the 
place, nor has the writer of this letter the abil- 
FOREST MANAGEMENT 
IN FRANCE 
In the administration of French forests and 
in the organization of the Forest Service (L’Ad- 
ministration des Eaux et Foréts) there are 
many points of interest for Americans. As has 
been said, the forests of France divide as to 
ownership into three classes, the state forests, 
the communal forests and the forests privately 
owned. The foresters of the forest service have 
full charge of the state forests and also to a 
considerable extent exercise supervision over 
the communal forests. In many cases the work- 
ing plans for these latter forests are prepared 
by the government foresters, and the marking 
of the trees to be felled is done under their 
direction. 
One outstanding and characteristic feature of 
the French forest law is that of requiring the 
maintenance of a “reserve” of 25 percent of the 
yield in communal forests. The purpose is that 
there always may be available a surplus that 
can be drawn on in case of emergency. The 
(49) 
