THE FORESTS OF FRANCE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3197, 22 September 1917, Page 8

THE FORESTS OF FRANCE

CRIMINAL DESTRUCTION BY THE GERMANS.

The German forest system has not only immensely enriched the State economics ally, it has also strengthened-it in national defence. None know the forests value in both these respects better thai: do the Germans, and when war came what they preciously conserved and used at home they immediately began to destroy in the occupied lands of their enemies. They did not stop with forest trees; in the recently evacuated territory Lhey ha-ve even been destroying tha chewy and apple trees, in violation of the injunction observed even by warriors of primitive times and recorded (ai Dr. Richard Harlan states in a letter to the X\ew York "Tribune") m Deuteronomy xx, i 9, 20 for the ancient warriors of 'srael in the campaigns they were to wage against the Canaanites:— "When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereot by forcing an axe against them; for thou mayest oat of them, and thou shalt not cwt them down ifor .the tree of the field is man's life)" to employ them in the sie"e. Only the trees wlucli tboai snowest that they be not trees for thou shalt destroy and cut them down. Describing this devastation, Mr. Whitney Warren, a well known New lone architect, in a letter to the New loi-k "Times," writes as follows:— "Aβ far aa one can see the oroh.xrds have been felled. All the rest of nature, the fields and forests, ate gmng all the glory which epnng, m spite ot all, brings forth, but through these same fields lie the'dead bodies of the fruit bearers, their boughs stretched in appealing attitude towards the heavens or crushed under the fallen woight. Along tlio lou.e in one spot we passed through im .venue of cherry trees, the bark o which had been carefully chipped oft by axes ioi the centire circumference 1o prereut tl-.e sap from mounting, and yet, in spite, ot this, they were in flower for the !a»t b The destruction of fruit trees has m> military purpose. Its one object can ouly be to make France weaker, not for war, but after war. It is not only savage, but contemptibly mean and Jpiinal. , \™ destruction of timber, on the other hand, has a military purpose, and can be notified under the law of warfare Whita the Germans left some patches standing, their work of devastation began with such promptness that as early as Becemoer, 1014 the French Government was compelled to create a Military Forest tom- , mission to act in connection with the General Staff, "to prepare- by all available means the wood supplies ior the r rmy '"-that is to say, favthe construe Uon of trenches, erection of shelter, barracks etc, as well ns for firewood, or cantonments, litters, water in.taltat.oa and corduroy roads. It also established temporary sawmills just in the rear ot tlie fighting /.ones. It could not establish enough mills, .ind .vet, with the enormously increased fighting force, )t; was necessary io have- more and more nulls.