_ COMPULSORY ACQUISITION 153 



manner. It is wanted at once. This, in a few 

 words, is the position accepted by all who have 

 studied the question. 



It may perhaps be granted at once that some 

 alteration in the law to facilitate the more speedy 

 acquisition of land, both for agriculture and forestry 

 requirements for well-defined public purposes, in the 

 interests of the community, will be introduced. A 

 Committee has been sitting and has made suggestions 

 on this head. 



The State will, we may infer, be armed with some 

 form of power for the compulsory acquisition of land 

 for well ascertained pubhc purposes. 



But the existence of such a law by no means 

 presupposes. that the land required for afforestation, 

 save perhaps in exceptional cases, will be ob- 

 tained through the enforcement of these powers. 

 Nor is it by any means certain that it would be 

 desirable that the afforestation of the waste lands 

 in this country should proceed by the way of State 

 ownership. The basis of our land occupancy is unlike 

 in many ways that existing in any continental states. 



It will, I think, be held by most people that a 

 man has as much right to his land as other sections 

 of the community to their houses and other property 

 — to their stocks and shares or War Loan — ^provided 

 the land is put to its best uses in the economic 

 interests of the community. 



Moreover, the proprietors of the land which it is 

 desired to afforest have played a not unimportant 

 part in the carrying on of the war. Their woods 

 may not have been all that was desirable in their 



