IMPORTS OF TIMBER 165 



I have alluded to the Coast Erosion and Afforesta 

 tion Commission appointed in 1906, its report being 

 issued in 1909. The Commission examined a host 

 of witnesses and practically every forestry expert 

 in the country. As a result it recommended the 

 afforestation of 9,000,000 acres in the country. The 

 remarkable relation existing between the acreage 

 recommended for afforestation by the Commission 

 and the imports of coniferous timber in 1913 (the 

 last year of ordinary imports before the war) is 

 worthy of note. In 1913 we imported 620,000,000 

 cubic feet of coniferous timber, or, at 70 cubic 

 feet to the acre (the yield which may be expected 

 from properly managed coniferous forests), just the 

 amount which 9,000,000 acres of forest would pro- 

 vide. Even this area would make no allowance for 

 increasing imports in the future. And yet the im- 

 ports of forest produce into Great Britain increased 

 to the value of £13,000,000 between 1909 and 1913' 

 This subsequent rise of itself would seem to have 

 justified the recommendations of the Coast Erosion 

 Commission, based as they were on the evidence of 

 all the experts. The fotestry recommendations of 

 this Commission were to some extent belittled owing 

 to their suggestion that the afforestation work would 

 solve the unemployed difftculty, at the time a serious 

 problem. This solution was ridiculed, it being said 

 that men unused to work on the soil could not be 

 trained and would not stand the exposure. Since 

 then the war has demonstrated the fallacy of this 

 argument. The exposure in the trenches has been 

 a far severer ordeal than planting on the most 



