A. Joshua West

Forests and National Security: British and American Forestry Policy in the Wake of World War I

THE WIDESPREAD and lasting legacies of major military conflicts, so often counted by lives lost and lands taken, are only beginning to be understood in terms of the human relationship with the natural environment. The First World War, unprecedented in scale and profoundly influential in shaping the social and political agenda of the modern era, offers an appropriate starting point for a new kind of environmental history. It is there that Ed Russell begins in his book War and Nature, in which he makes a pioneering attempt to cross the "war-nature divide" by tracing the links between the development of chemical warfare and the U.S. agro-chemical industry during the twentieth century. To Russell, "war and nature coevolved: the control of nature expanded the scale of war, and war expanded the scale on which people controlled nature."¹ The chemical industry exploited political circumstance to find profitable common ground in waging war against both people and nature. Yet what Russell calls the "coevolution" of war and control over nature is not always so complementary. Wars are enormously expensive, not only in battlefield casualties but also in terms of natural resources. Resource limits exposed during the crisis of wartime have the potential to steer the course of military events, and the reaction to these limits influences the approach to resource management in the wake of war. This article considers the impact of wartime experiences on resource management by exploring the evolution of British and U.S. forestry policy after World War I in relation to the circumstances of timber supply and management during the war. 1

     The immediate cost of the First World War to forests was dramatic. Battlefields were reduced to ruins along the Western Front, reminding American generals of the vast cut-overs they had left behind in the south of their home country. On an even greater scale was the crisis-driven destruction of forests across Europe to provide for the war effort: Timber worth $800 million was lost in the forests of France, while 50 percent of Britain's productive forest was cut in the span of four years.² Yet, despite this immediate devastation, the forests of Europe recovered with time, and the war had its most lasting influence through its impact on the development of forestry policy. The cases of Britain and the United States are particularly interesting when considered side by side because, while the nature of policy change differed substantially between the two countries, reflecting very different national circumstances, shared traits suggest common themes about war's impact on resource management. The principal difference lay in the scale and immediacy of impact: Britain's dramatic Forestry Act of 1919 is widely acknowledged as legislation in response to crisis, while the more subtle but no less relevant role of the war in America's policy making of the 1920s has been largely overlooked. Yet despite these differences, both Britain's immediate and America's prolonged forestry debates culminated in policies that were framed around the pre-war agendas of prominent forestry professionals. 2

     In Britain, long-standing reliance on foreign sources led to a domestic timber crisis during the war, when submarine warfare restricted shipping and cut off imported supplies. The widespread national urgency emerging from this crisis stimulated rapid evolution of national forestry policy after the Armistice. Looking for immediate answers to what seemed to be critical national-security concerns, Parliament passed the Forestry Act of 1919, adopting with little debate the recommendations of forestry professionals who advocated intensive government involvement in afforestation and timber production. Professional opinion, which had been largely ignored by policy makers before the war, was suddenly eagerly embraced by the government. The wartime timber crisis brought new circumstances that put an old forestry agenda on the center stage of national policy. 3

     In contrast to Britain, the domestic timber industry in the United States was sheltered during wartime by its distance from the front line and by its limited dependence on trade. Yet even though the sheer urgency that drove British policy making was absent from America, the influence of the war was not. The U.S. forestry community was engaged with the war through the participation of the Tenth and Twentieth Engineering Corps of the American Expeditionary Forces in France, as forestry units responsible for supplying timber for the war effort. This mobilization of specialist troops, accompanied by a global rethinking of resource use stimulated by the war, raised new questions about forestry management at home. These questions fertilized post-war policy initiatives and fostered a heated debate during the early 1920s between Forest Service chief and William Greeley and the leader of the conservationists Gifford Pinchot, over the federal role in forestry on private lands. As Greeley's campaign rhetoric developed, it became clear that the ultimate legislative outcome of this debate would be substantially guided by America's war experience. Ultimately, the war facilitated the realization during the 1920s of Greeley's pre-war agenda for cooperative federal programs with private landowners. As in Britain, an old political agenda found an ally in the legacy of war. The war did not revolutionize fundamental ideas about forestry in either country, but it changed political circumstances and, ultimately, national attitudes and policies. 4

The British Case: The Forestry act of 1919

HISTORIANS COMMONLY discuss the First World War as a defining moment in the history of forestry in the United Kingdom.³ Indeed, the impact of the war on forestry policy in Britain was acute and dramatic: While there was no unified national legislative approach to forestry before 1914, soon after the Armistice in 1919 a newly established Forestry Commission was put in charge of massive timber afforestation programs across the island. The war had led to the whole-scale re-invention of what forestry meant to the nation. 5

"Woodsmanship" in Turn-of-The-Century Britain

SIGNIFICANT WOODLANDS did exist in Britain before the war, in a few public forests and on large private estates, but timber production was a low priority and forestry was given minimal government attention.⁴ This is not to say that the existing woods were unimportant; as the historical ecologist Oliver Rackham has pointed out, the history of many ancient woods extended through generations of the nation's past, weaving a rich part of the tapestry of Britain's rural culture and landscape.⁵ However, by the beginning of the twentieth century, these woodlands were not significant players in Britain's timber economy, simply because timber production was not viewed as an important part of domestic "woodsmanship." The forester John Simpson succinctly described the state of the discipline in 1900 by saying that, "British practice, both in precept and in practice, as our forest literature and our woods show conclusively ... views forestry not so much from an industrial and financial as from an artificial cultural point of view."⁶ 6

     It was widely accepted that the management of forests for timber was not worthwhile economically because the nation was sustained by high-quality imported lumber. The economic historian Arthur Lower has traced how, by the middle of the nineteenth century, metropolitan Britain had come to rely on the vast virgin forests of North America and northern Europe for its timber.⁷ In 1914, domestic timber accounted for just 10 percent of wood consumed in the United Kingdom, imports having grown fivefold between 1850 and 1910.⁸ Even though domestic demand was continually rising, amounting to a £30 million average expenditure each year,⁹ there was little perceived need to produce wood at home because of the vast foreign supply. The Earl of Selbourne, a leading forest enthusiast, described the dilemma faced by private landowners who tried to enter the market: "We were dependent before the war upon imported timber to an enormous proportion of our annual requirement, not only for building purposes, but for all pit-props in our mines, and, as every owner of woodlands knows, we who own woodlands found it very difficult to sell our product, however good in quality, for any reasonable price before the war."¹⁰ There was little apparent economic incentive for the British to pay much attention to timber management at home early in the twentieth century. 7

The Seeds of Expert Forestry Opinion

EVEN WITHOUT an economic push for timber production at home, some Britons at the turn of the century were seeking a more centrally organized and economically oriented approach to managing domestic forests. Forestry as a profession had existed in England in some form since the seventeenth century, with most professional foresters working on private estates.¹¹ Though they were not in a position to organize broad national policy, some foresters, long before the hostilities of 1914, did warn of the potential dangers of relying on imported timber. In his 1656 book on Practical Husbandry, Gabriel Plattes argued that, "Now the multitude of timber brought yearely from Norway and other parts doe plainly demonstrate the scarcitie thereof here: also it may be conjectured what a miserable case the Kingdom will be plunged into in an Age or two hence, for want of Timber."¹² Others echoed Plattes' sentiments throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.¹³ The Scottish noble Lord Henry Home Kames recognized in The Gentleman Farmer of 1776 that the neglect of British forests over the centuries had left Scotland in the frustrating position of importing vast quantities of wood despite its potentially fertile land for forestry: "Considering the great quantity of wasteland in Scotland, fit only for bearing trees, and the easiness of transporting them by navigable arms of the sea, one cannot but regret the indolence of our forefathers, who neglected that profitable branch of commerce, and left us to the necessity of purchasing foreign timber for every use in life."¹⁴ 8

     Implicit in Kames' criticism was the understanding that forestry could be a "profitable branch of commerce" if there were a centralized initiative to manage British lands as timber resources. As the end of the nineteenth century approached, some foresters began to look toward European forest management as a model for a national approach which might make forestry profitable in Britain. 9

     Sir William Schlich led the charge, calling for an organized British afforestation policy as early as 1886 and arguing in his classic Manual of Forestry of 1906 that, "if we treat our forests in a more rational manner, we shall produce just as fine timber as that now imported."¹⁵ Schlich had spent several years as inspector general of forests to the Indian government and brought his experiences there back to England. Earlier in the nineteenth century, the British had hired German professionals to manage Indian forests with an eye toward timber production. This became the model of forest management that Schlich saw as important for Britain domestically, commenting that it was in his exposure to German practices as applied in India that he became "aware of the great importance to this country [Britain] of extended afforestation and improved management of existing woods."¹⁶ 10

     Though he was particularly vocal, Schlich was by no means alone as an advocate of national afforestation at the turn of the century. In 1900, John Simpson also presented an elaborate plan for adapting the well-established and highly praised forestry practices of continental Europe to the British Isles.¹⁷ These commentaries began to lay the foundation for using European timber management practices to develop a national forestry policy for Britain. 11

     The early years of the twentieth century saw the beginning of governmental discourse about the state of British forestry, emerging out of the comments of professionals such as Schlich and Simpson. Initially scattered across various ministerial authorities, these discussions were unified by the 1909 Report of the Royal Commission on Coast Erosion and Afforestation, which advocated the afforestation of between 6 million and 9 million acres in the British Isles.¹⁸ The report recommended the appointment of a national Forestry Commission to guide forest administration, justifying its proposals on the basis that afforestation would contribute to the solution of Britain's unemployment problems. The report received mixed reviews but did succeed in sparking unprecedented attention.¹⁹ As one analyst commented at the time, "probably nothing has previously done so much to arouse a general interest in the subject [of forestry in Britain]."²⁰ 12

     However, the report did not stimulate any actual policy change, despite its fundamental basis in the management philosophy that had been successful for the British in India. Political apathy may have been related partly to the intimidating immensity of the report's recommendations; while a few, such as Schlich, thought that they were neither unreasonable nor inflexible suggestions, most politicians seemed to agree that, "such heroic methods scarcely suit such a difficult and risky enterprise."²¹ Others questioned the report's justification of afforestation as a solution for unemployment woes.²² Discussion about state forestry continued in the following years, with ancillary Scottish and Welsh reports appearing in 1911 and 1912, but policy change remained elusive in the absence of significant motivation. British forestry awaited the urgency of a "miserable case" such as that predicted by Plattes in 1656. The timber supply crisis of 1916 became exactly such a case. 13

The War: Timber Supply Crisis

THE FIRST World War shocked the United Kingdom into seeing a need to manage forests as timber resources. This change was clear in the actions taken by the government during and after the war, beginning with the appointment in July 1916 of the Forestry Sub-Committee of the Reconstruction Commission and continuing with the Forestry Act passed in Parliament in 1919. The 1919 act established the Forestry Commission and set the first explicit national agenda of afforestation and timber management. The First Annual Report of the Forestry Commission highlighted the importance that the war played in its foundation: "That the state of things was unsatisfactory in time of peace was generally admitted. It required but one year of war to show how critical the position was in a time of national emergency."²³ It was the war that had taken the issue of forestry policy off the dusty shelf holding Schlich's 1886 pamphlet and the 1909 report of the Committee on Coast Erosion. 14

     The war had such a dramatic influence on the course of an industry so long forgotten in Britain because it posed unprecedented demands for timber. The British needed wood during the conflict primarily for three purposes: They needed timber to maintain the domestic coal mines that kept the military running; they needed wood for the army in France, in particular for trenches, for barracks, and for fence and telegraph poles; and they needed timber to build and sustain their munitions industries. It was a great challenge for the British, who had become so reliant on foreign supply during the nineteenth century, to meet these wartime requirements. Early in the war, it became clear that continuing to import timber would be difficult because it required immense shipping resources that became more and more restricted under pressure from German submarine warfare. The Earl of Selbourne, president of the U.K. Board of Agriculture, recalled the problem eloquently: "Now, suddenly in the war, the Government discovered that it is a very dangerous thing to be dependent upon overseas supplies. The shipping problem early became acute, and it was soon seen that a very large proportion of our tonnage was engaged in bringing timber to this country—timber for building, timber for mines, and timber for paper-making. Very early they began to curtail the supply of tonnage used for this purpose; they began to look about and see what there was in the British Isles that could be used."²⁴ 15

     Shipping restrictions meant that the British no longer could afford to rely on importing wood from around the globe. The problem of timber supply became ever more severe as the spring and summer of 1916 passed, and the British increasingly looked to timber from home to sustain their war effort, as the prominent American forester Henry Graves recalled: "Prior to the submarine difficulties the British obtained a large part of their lumber and railroad ties from Scandinavia, Russia, Canada, and the United States, but by the winter of 1917 the importations of lumber were so far cut off that it was necessary ... to operate in England and Scotland."²⁵ 16

     Ultimately, the British were able to supply domestically 40 percent of the pit timber their coal mines required (a total demand of 100,000 tons of wood per month). They continued to import the remaining 60 percent, mostly from France and Scandinavia, where shipping distances were kept to a minimum.²⁶ 17

     At the time, only the urgency of wartime demand mitigated the damages associated with this endeavor to find domestic sources of wood. To the British in 1919, the cost of producing 40,000 tons of timber per month domestically promised the utter devastation of their forests. As Percival Ridsdale, an American forestry journalist traveling through Britain after the war, commented, "Great Britain was thoroughly earnest about cutting down every tree if it was needed."²⁷ In terms of sheer quantity, in England, Scotland, and Wales, 17 million tons of green timber were harvested for war purposes between 1916 and 1918; this amounted to over twenty times the average annual domestic timber harvested before the war and involved the razing of about 450,000 acres of land (equivalent to almost half of the productive forested land in Britain at the time). Though these figures seem staggering, the damages to Britain's forest resources seemed to foresters at the time to extend beyond statistics; as Ridsdale commented, the actual amount of timber harvested "is only part of the loss since the woods had to be slaughtered irrespective of the interests of silviculture ... often entailing ruining the entire future of the woods."²⁸ 18

     The war had not, in fact, permanently destroyed the ancient woodlands of the British Isles, as Oliver Rackham points out with the advantage of fifty year's hindsight: "It is not true, as many writers tell us, that these fellings destroyed much woodland. Successive Ordnance maps make it quite clear that almost all the ancient woods surviving in 1870 were still there in 1945.... Ancient woods have great powers of recovery; the 1914-1945 fellings did little more than catch up, for some woods, with the neglect of timber felling between 1860 and 1914."²⁹ 19

     Britain's woodlands survived the timber demands of the war despite the immense pressure on them. In the long run, what became important for the future of British forestry was less the actual impact of the wartime timber crisis on woodland than the public perception of this impact, and what it meant for the country. The British had indeed faced a tremendous challenge during the war in trying to extract useful timber from forests that had been managed for centuries with little view toward timber production.³⁰ The result was that the nation acutely felt the pains of a timber supply shortage at a particularly critical moment in its history between 1916 and 1918, and the British came to see the future management of their forests as inextricably linked to the future safety of their nation. 20

Forestry Policy: The Post-Crisis Response

FORESTRY PROFESSIONALS were eager to take advantage of the concern bred by wartime crisis to muster support for their proposals. As it became clear that the timber supply problem might motivate government action, foresters became increasingly vocal in their arguments for a major national forestry initiative. In the first two years of the war, between June 1914 and June 1916, one article relating to the forestry implications of the war appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Forestry (the organ of the Royal English Arboricultural Society). Three such articles appeared in the last two Quarterly issues of 1916 alone (after the timber supply question had reached crisis level in the summer).³¹ Many more followed in the next years. Reviewers heralded the appearance of articles and books on forestry as providing possible solutions to the pressing problems of wartime timber supply. A review of the book British Forestry by E. P. Stebbing, which appeared in late 1916, commented that, "Mr. Stebbing's book, dealing as it does with Forestry in its national aspects, is particularly welcome at this time ... [as] the war has revealed the weaknesses of our position in regard to timber supplies and the peril to which British industries are exposed by the shortage of this commodity."³² The war had rapidly become a focal point for those who saw it as an opportunity to advance their agenda, and no chance was missed to reiterate the threat that timber shortages were posing to Britain in wartime. 21

     Foresters were quite evidently aware of the central importance that this crisis could hold as a linchpin for influencing opinion. Schlich, who had been a vocal proponent of revising forestry policy prior to the war, took the effort in July 1916 to restate his case, for the first time in his career placing significant emphasis on "securing the country against an unexpected emergency."³⁵ As he had done in his 1886 Manual of Forestry, in 1916 he still identified the economic importance of rising timber prices, the benefits of afforestation in creating employment opportunities, and the aesthetic and ecological benefits of forests as important reasons for "increasing the area of forests."³⁶ However, while he had made all of these arguments previously, never before 1916 had he argued that forestry was vital to national security. Even in 1915, in an article on "Forestry and the War," Schlich did not explicitly refer to defense concerns when he called for the "government of this country to take early steps to increase the area of the forests in these islands."³⁵ This article, like his earlier Manual, appeared before the timber supply question had become the apparent crisis it was by the middle of 1916. What was different in July 1916 in Schlich's restatement of the forestry question was that he could present his case with much greater urgency by citing the threat that a timber shortage posed to national security. This urgency was more rhetorical than substantial, having no noticeable influence on Schlich's actual proposals for expansive afforestation programs in Britain.³⁶ 22

     The urgency informing the professional rhetoric of Schlich and his colleagues also motivated the action taken by the government in the next years. If for no other reason, the war seemed to justify a governmental role in forestry for the sake of national security. As the war progressed, it became increasingly obvious to Parliament and to the public that the shortage of timber posed a real threat to the nation's ability to maintain its military. As one analyst commented in July 1918, "The war has revealed in the plainest possible manner that to meet any future crisis an adequate reserve supply [of timber] will be essential. In a national emergency we must not have to risk a collapse through a dearth of this all-important raw material."³⁷ 23

     Perhaps not surprisingly, this question of national security would become central to the forestry policy that developed in the next years. This was evident early in the policy discourse, with the release in January 1918 of the Report of the Forestry Sub-Committee of the Reconstruction Commission (the so-called Acland Report, in honor of the committee's chairman). The report emphasized the importance of developing domestic timber resources to avoid a supply crisis like that of the First World War, concluding that "the above proposals are framed in the interest of national safety, which requires that more timber should be grown in the British Isles." The recommendation to plant 1,770,000 acres of forests in Britain was made explicitly "to render the United Kingdom independent of imported timber for three years in an emergency."³⁸ This would be achieved by establishing a centralized "forestry authority" which would oversee afforestation initiatives. 24

     In fact, though the justification of national security was as new to the government as it was to Schlich's rhetoric, these proposals in 1918 differed little from the recommendations of earlier government panels, and particularly the 1909 Committee on Coast Erosion. The Acland Report in 1918 was a direct legacy of well-established opinions about timber management in Britain, rather than a fundamental break with the past in its recommendations for afforestation. 25

     Driven by the drama of the war timber crisis, the Acland Report did break new ground in its political efficacy; the report led to the Forestry Act passed in Parliament in 1919, establishing the British Forestry Commission. The commission was charged with guiding British afforestation, combining significant state schemes with cooperative grants to private landowners. These cooperative grants would be designed to stimulate private investments in timber production; the prevailing opinion of forestry professionals was that timber would be a profitable enterprise in the long run but required an initial investment by the government because of low short-term yields. In sum, the 1919 act succeeded in establishing a lasting place for state involvement in British forestry in the name of national security.³⁹ 26

     The urgency of 1918 succeeded in making the Acland report much more effective and directly influential than the 1909 government report that had advocated similar measures. In 1909, the chief justification for a national forest authority was based on the questionable assumption that afforestation would reduce national unemployment. In 1918, Parliament saw a much more pressing need in securing the nation to face future emergency. Over the course of the war years, timber had gone from an easily imported commodity to a frighteningly scarce one. By the time Parliament considered forestry policy in 1919, the British felt pressed to secure timber resources for their future and turned to the pre-existing proposals advocating dramatic afforestation schemes. Robert Miller, in writing about the history of the British Forestry Commission, has noted that the expansion of state forestry in this manner was approved without opposition and without any parliamentary debate about alternative policies. Other solutions, such as the organization of a "strategic timber stockpile," might have been equally effective in achieving the act's professed goal of securing timber for times of national emergency, but no such possibilities were even mentioned at the time.⁴² 27

     The creation in 1919 of a U.K. Forestry Commission in charge of massive afforestation initiatives had resulted because of the perceived urgent importance of timber for national security following the supply crisis of World War I. However, the policy that emerged in Britain was formed around the framework of earlier proposals. The professional and governmental discourse about afforestation in the early years of the century may have been largely irrelevant in its time, but in the long run it became crucial in directing national forestry policy, to the extent that, in the words of Miller, it had "built up a presumption in favor of state forestry."⁴¹ The work of professionals such as Schlich offered a vision for British forestry, a vision based on continental traditions of timber management, which was readily adopted in time of crisis. 28

     It was because of the supply crisis that the British adopted a forestry approach that emphasized management for timber supply, turning away from a long tradition of managing limited woodlands for principally aesthetic and recreational purposes. As a result, the course of British forestry in the twentieth century was fundamentally re-directed by the adoption of a vision that addressed wartime concerns. In the following decades, the needs and demands for timber changed dramatically in Britain. Whether the timber management approach was well suited to Britain in time of peace is debatable, but it is nevertheless undeniable that the war left an indelible mark both on the countryside landscape itself and on the way the British perceived their forested lands. 29

The U.S. Case: Setting the Stage for Real 'Progress'

THOUGH THE forestry community in the United States felt nothing like the dramatic shock experienced by the British, war experiences did reverberate through American policy making during the 1920s. America's relative isolation from the theater of war no doubt shielded it from the impact felt in Europe. Equally significantly, America's forestry policy already had evolved under the scrutiny of extensive national debate, with substantial support from the federal government, during the closing decades of the nineteenth century.⁴² The first step toward the creation of the U.S. Forest Service came in 1876, in response to the perceived threat of "timber famine" which endangered what was in fact a crucial natural resource for the U.S. economy (naturally endowed with vast virgin forests, the country was a significant net exporter of forest product raw materials at the start of World War I, netting $137 million in exports in 1913).⁴³ Congress passed a National Forestry Act in 1897, and the Forest Service was created in 1905. The government's role continued to evolve under the leadership of Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot, culminating in the Weeks Law of 1911, which provided for broad federal acquisition of forest lands and initiated cooperative fire protection programs with states and private landowners. These achievements at the dawn of the twentieth century meant that, as the First World War approached, the United States had not only a well-established forestry policy but also an intense and active national discourse about its evolution.⁴⁴ The American experience of the war stoked the fire of this debate, with a consequent impact that echoed through policy making in the ensuing decade. 30

Wartime Timber Demands and The Twentieth Engineers

AMERICAN FORESTS did not share the wartime burden that left such a mark in Europe; the United Stated faced no acute timber crisis like Britain did at the time. Though timber production increased after America entered the conflict in 1917, the increase in the United States was negligible compared to that in Europe. Wartime production of timber represented, on average, a 17 percent increase over the 38.38 billion board feet per year produced in the United States in 1913, compared with the twentyfold increase in the amount of timber harvested yearly in Britain during the war.⁴⁵ The increase in American timber production was largely for domestic projects associated with war—everything from such mundane purposes as wood for crates, boxes, and even wooden ships to the more glorified use of spruce to build an American air fleet that could fight in France.⁴⁶ A post-war internal U.S. Forest Service memo detailed the yearly consumption of timber for war purposes (see Table 1).⁴⁷ The domestic lumber industry responded successfully to these increased demands, and many American lumbermen took great pride in assisting with the war effort.⁴⁸ 31

Table 1. Annual U.S. Timber Use for War Purposes

Cantonments and Housing 2 million boardfeet

Boxes 1.2 million boardfeet

Aircraft 148,000 boardfeet

Ships 804,000 boardfeet

Railroads 3.4 million boardfeet

Other purposes-gunstocks, propellers, vehicles, and war implements

     With timber shortages striking wartime Europe, the relatively small impact on America's own forests may seem surprising, except that the demand for American timber abroad was so severely limited by the restrictions on shipping tonnage imposed by German submarine warfare. In fact, the total export sales of U.S. forest products fell by 63 percent between 1913 and 1918 despite higher timber prices during the war.⁴⁹ Ironically, these limited exports may well have saved American forests from broader destruction. 32

     At the same time, however, these restrictions made it difficult to supply wood for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in Europe. Only days after General John J. Pershing's arrival in France, the shortage of necessary timber for American troops had become painfully evident. In a letter to the French minister of armaments, the army's purchasing officer, Colonel J. A. Woodruff, explained the challenge he faced when he arrived in Europe: "It [was] necessary to cancel practically all shipment of wood from the United States on account of the shortage of ship tonnage."⁵⁰ 33

     The United States needed wood for many purposes to accomplish its goals in the war. As Major Barrington Moore recalled later, one of the greatest challenges was finding timber to build docks in the French ports where American troops were landing: "The ports of France were not built with a view to the landing of large armies, and were wholly inadequate; yet the speedy debarkation of troops, with their munitions and supplies had to be assured at all costs. The submarines forced the [troop] ships to come in convoys of ten or fifteen at once, requiring several times the dock space the same number of ships would have needed singly.... For this we must have piling and wharf timbers."⁵¹ 34

     These demands for dock timber only added to the many other timber demands of wartime, from lumber for warehouses, barracks, and hospitals to railroad ties, telegraph poles, and front-line road planks, as well as fuelwood for warmth and cooking.⁵² 35

     Given these needs, army officials realized that the success of the AEF would be gravely jeopardized without adequate timber supplies. With shipping restricted, they made the case that the American armies would have to be supplied with timber from the forests of France. In a letter to the U.S. Minister of Foreign Affairs on 4 December 1917, the French Minister of Agriculture and Supplies agreed that "the scarcity of available shipping at the present time has rendered it necessary to decide that the timber needed by the American Army should all be taken from our [French] national territory. It has been agreed that this timber, delivered theoretically standing and to be cut by the American troops, should be furnished by the French government and granted to the American government."⁵³ 36

     Though the French were willing to provide standing timber, they were desperately short of the labor that would be needed to cut it. General Pershing had no choice but to call for a regiment of American forestry troops to be sent to France, which he did in the spring of 1917. Accordingly, the U.S. War Department organized the Tenth Engineering Corps during the summer of 1917, and American foresters began arriving in France under the leadership of Henry Graves, then chief forester in the United States, with the specific goal of cutting the wood required by the AEF. The increasing scale of the American war effort meant that a larger group of forestry troops were sent to France in November, combining with those already there to form the Twentieth Engineers in late 1917. Graves' assistant, Colonel William Greeley, assumed leadership in early 1918, when Graves returned to the U.S. to resume his work with the Forest Service. Forestry troops continued to gather in France until March 1918; at the signing of the Armistice, there were 21,000 trained foresters involved in the war effort. 37

     The mission of the Twentieth Engineers was praised as a tremendous success. By the end of the war, 450 million board feet of lumber and 650,000 cords of fuelwood had been used by the American troops, over 75 percent of which had been harvested by the American foresters in France. Less than 1 percent had to be imported from the United States.⁵⁸ The work of the Twentieth Engineers had been an essential part of the war campaign. Colonel Woodruff told the forestry troops that "your part in winning the war has been as important as that of any other troops in the American Expeditionary Forces."⁵⁵ Others later echoed the sentiment that, without the forestry troops, the entirety of the American mission in France would have been at serious risk.⁵⁶ 38

Impressions of French Forestry

THE TWENTIETH Engineers succeeded not on the basis of hard work and good organization alone; they benefited from the high quality of the timber available in the French forests. Without these standing resources, the American effort would have been in vain, and the engineers gratefully appreciated the legacy of French forestry traditions, as Major Moore highlighted at the time: "I think it is safe to say that the French forests were one of the big factors in winning the war. Had not the standing timber been in France to cut, it would have been useless to send forestry troops, and we would have been compelled to use precious tonnage in bringing the wood to our armies.... And why did she have them? Because she had practiced forestry for generations.... The French forests were not simply nature's gift, but the fruit of conscious effort, applied with painstaking care and industry through long years."⁵⁷ 39

     That painstaking care of French forestry made a lasting impression on the American engineers. Americans learned much more from working in the French forests than they ever could have been taught in the classroom; one private wrote to a former professor in the United States that, "During the course of the [Pennsylvania Forest] Academy you showed us many photographs of the well-kept and carefully managed forests of continental Europe, but it takes a view of the real forests to convey a clear concept of the intensively managed forests."⁵⁸ 40

     In contrast to the Americans, the French intensively managed forests for long-term sustained production, a practice that had developed in response to the competing demands for limited land in Europe. French management required restricted fellings in forests and careful and efficient methods of cutting, so that, unlike in the United States, lumbermen were expected to cut stumps level to the ground, and to watch carefully "to prevent injury to seedlings and saplings." The waste from American mills, with their large and faster circular saws, "was anathema to the thrifty French."⁵⁹ French forests were neat and well organized because they had been selectively logged and replanted for decades, while U.S. timber mostly came from virgin stands or haphazardly managed re-growth. As a result, in the words of one wartime report from America, "the attractive, sanitary, productive, and organized French forests have impressed not only foresters and lumbermen, but also those engaged in other professions and businesses before entering military service."⁶⁰ 41

     Yet the relationship between the engineers and the French foresters was tumultuous, aggravated by the constant resistance that the Americans faced in their efforts to secure sufficient timber for the army. The correspondence of Graves and the diaries of Greeley reveal just how much of a challenge they faced from the often obstinate French authorities.⁶¹ General Pershing even remarked to Graves many years after the war, on 21 February 1923, that "I oftentimes recall your struggles with the French bureaus when you were trying to obtain logging concessions for the A.E.F."⁶⁷ In addition to being reluctant to make timber concessions, the French were insistent on America's commitment of adequate reimbursement.⁶² Greeley was notably forthright when he commented in July 1919 that, "four-fifths of the A.E.F. officers are returning with strong prejudices against the French ... [because of] their overcharging, their frequent profiteering, and their frequent selfishness."⁶³ 42

     Despite this acrimony, however, the American officers' admiration for Continental forestry was undented. Greeley was so eager for the engineers to learn from their experiences in Europe that after the Armistice he sought to enroll members of the Twentieth Engineers in French forestry classes.⁶⁴ In notes from 1920, he summarized the importance of the lessons he saw for the Americans: "The American woodsmen in the forest regiments have learned much from their experience in the French forests.... As the months passed by most of the American soldiers appreciated the fundamental common sense behind [French] forestry rules.... The average American lumberjack left France with a far different attitude toward her forestry practice than he had upon arrival. How lasting the effects of this first hand experience in old world methods will be is problematic. But certainly many of these thousands of woodsmen have brought back to our own forests a totally new conception of their economic value and of practical means for conserving it."⁶⁵ 43

     Greeley's doubts about the long-term proved to be insightful. Though the engineers had been profoundly impressed by the French experience, there is no evidence that this revolutionized the ways American foresters practiced their craft when they returned. The ethos of American forestry, with its focus on virgin forests rather than carefully maintained plantation, differed so substantially that these changes would have been very surprising indeed.⁶⁶ 44

The Lasting Influence: Re-igniting the Policy Debate

WHAT THE IMPRESSIONS from the wartime experience did do was to stoke the embers of America's forestry policy debate. Those returning from France felt determined that U.S. forests should not be reduced, through wanton timber practices, into the wasteland of barren stumps that scarred the Western Front. For Graves and Greeley, those stumps were reminders of America's worst cut-overs. At the same time, the engineers, many of whom were influential foresters themselves, had, in seeing the French system, inevitably developed a new recognition of what forestry policy could accomplish. The men serving in the war, "had borne upon them the vast importance of a definite and vigorously applied forest policy," one captain reported when he returned in 1919.⁶⁷ They came back to America questioning whether existing policies would adequately secure the future of the industry, not to mention the country itself, as another captain spelled out: "Thanks to the wisdom and skill of the French people, they were ready with the forests when the forests were needed. The United States, too, has an extensive system of national forests owned and administered by the federal government, and they constitute just as important a factor in our national defenses as did the French forests for our Allies in the last war."⁶⁸ The engineers, who had been so undeniably impressed by French forestry administration, were clearly eager to ensure that America should follow suit in protecting its forests. 45

     In fact, the recognition that Americans could learn valuable lessons from French traditions was hardly groundbreaking. Early in the 1910s, the Yale forester Theodore S. Woolsey had prepared a study of French practices in North Africa, published in 1917 as French Forests and Forestry, with a general aim "to set forth the essentials of a method which may be applied directly in the United States."⁶⁹ This was followed by his Studies in French Forestry which he began in 1912 but did not finish until after the war in 1920.⁷⁰ By this time, the book not surprisingly contained significant material relating to the war, including a chapter by Greeley specifically on the experiences of the Twentieth Engineers. Even more than Woolsey's pre-war book, Studies in French Forestry offered direct and explicit "conclusions ... [which] should be brought home to every citizen of the United States."⁷⁷ Woolsey's specific suggestions for the United States included continued expansion of public forestry for long-term economic benefit, the need for some regulation of forestry on private lands, the explicit recognition of limits to virgin timber resources, and the building of a vision of intensively managed public forests in America. 46

     Though in terms of academic forestry the continental example had long been important, the war brought the French case under the microscope of public attention, and the inevitable comparison raised questions for the whole forestry community about America's existing policies and institutions in 1919. This new-found interest meant that it was not only specialists such as Woolsey and the engineers who had been in France who saw the need for opening new debate in America. James Toumey, director of the influential Yale Forest School at the time, was among those who saw the war experience as offering critical lessons for America: "It was generally known prior to the war that forests are essential as a material basis for industry. The last few years have shown us that they are indispensable in time of national strife. In time our virgin forests will disappear and their vast resources of timber will be gone. With their disappearance are we to lose this important asset in times of peace and indispensable asset in times of war, or are we going to keep our forests intact through conservation?"⁷² 47

     Suddenly, in the span of a few short years, forests had become "indispensable" not only to support industrial growth but for the sake of national security. This change, eloquently expressed by Toumey, reflected the broader impact of the war in awakening global concern about resource scarcity. 48

     World War I spurred emerging debate about resource use and management. This was not just a question of forestry and timber; in the words of historian Joseph Miller, "the scale of the War affected every part of American life, raising questions generally about material purpose, readiness, efficiency, and organization."⁷² The decades following 1914 saw a shift in western thinking about the human relationship with the environment, as Michael Williams writes: "Primarily, the focus was on limits, availability, and ownership of some of the earth's key renewable resources, particularly land, timber, soil, and water, which led to the quest for conservation."⁷⁴ 49

     Timber itself was at the center of these questions about material limits to production because it was such a crucial resource economically and politically. Charting a wise course for managing timber took on fundamental significance for how humanity could manage natural resources in a world of limits. This responsibility weighed heavily on Toumey when he commented in 1919 that "The war has thrown the nations of the world into a condition of flux and there is a universal yearning that from the flux of today may come something more just than has come out of the past. The time has never been so ripe for doing things that will benefit mankind and the time has never been so fraught with danger."⁷⁵ The war became an awakening, an awakening of responsibility but also of opportunity, that required new thinking about forestry policy and management. 50

From Graves to Greeley: Post-War Policy Initiatives

THE WARTIME forestry experiences of the engineers, accompanied by the rising consciousness of resource scarcity, rapidly ignited a new debate about the direction of forestry policy and management, with a focus on how the government should treat the vast areas of forest that were not owned by the federal government. The work of Gifford Pinchot and President Theodore Roosevelt had left America with substantial public holdings, but existing policies lacked provisions for managing forest lands in private hands. As the war drew to a close, Graves, still chief forester, quickly began a campaign focused on, in his own words, implementing "the right forestry practices on all of the forests of this country."⁷⁶ To Congress, he advocated new legislation for cooperation with private landowners, arguing that "while public forestry has made vast strides, the forests of the country that are in private hands are being depleted with very great rapidity, and almost everywhere without effort to renew them."⁷⁷ 51

     Though Graves did not publicly appeal to post-war sentiment in his early campaign, he did acknowledge privately the crucial importance of the war in a letter to Greeley in 1919: "We are holding conferences all over the country to lay a foundation for a program of forestry which will really bring about some action on private lands. The movement is already getting a good deal of attention and I anticipate that ... we will have a pretty lively campaign on our hands. Our program is one which would not have gotten anywhere at all two years ago. I am confident that we are going to make a good deal of headway now for I find a response from all the country which is astonishing. Our new movement of forestry is stimulating the entire profession and I believe will result in again putting forestry on the map."⁷⁸ 52

     Greeley, who succeeded Graves as chief forester in 1920, recognized the rhetorical potential of their position and was more publicly explicit in his appeal to the America's changing attitudes in the wake of the war.⁷⁹ Greeley contributed several articles to leading journals on the merits French forest policy, as well as two chapters to Woolsey's Studies in French Forestry. He invoked both the fear of resource scarcity engendered by the war as well as the specific experience of the Twentieth Engineers in arguing that, "particularly at the present time, when the war has brought home to us the weakness and danger of our own indifference to the forest resources of the United States, it is opportune to take note how similar problems have been worked out in France."⁸⁰ He tried to emphasize how the French experience supported the need for exactly the kind of private cooperation that his ongoing policy campaign advocated: "Publicly owned forests cannot do all of it in the United States any more than in France. Our national policy should aim definitely and unequivocally at the practice of forestry by private owners as rapidly as that can be brought about by better methods of taxing timberland, by the cooperation and educational help of state and federal agencies, and by the recognition, on an equitable basis, of the obligations carried by forest ownership."⁸¹ Greeley appealed to the French comparison to justify his proposed policy, but the direction he suggested for America—one based on recognition, cooperation, and taxation—bore less direct resemblance to the "lessons from France" than to his own 1914 Forest Service report on the depressed conditions of the lumber industry. 53

     In 1914, Greeley's recommendations for a cooperative rather than a regulatory approach toward the lumber industry had presented an unprecedented challenge to the orthodox American forestry community, falling "like a bombshell into the midst of ardent ... conservationists."⁸² Instead of directly regulating cutting on private timberlands, as advocated by forest conservationists led by former Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot, Greeley proposed federal programs cooperating with states and private landowners to prevent fires and improve harvesting practices. As he argued for new forestry policies in the 1920s, the principles of his campaign were substantively the same: federal cooperation with states in fire protection, the extension of federal forests, the reforestation of federal lands, a study of forest taxation policy, and a survey of American forest resources.⁸³ With little changing in Greeley's agenda between 1914 and the 1920s, the importance of wartime lessons from France in actually shaping his viewpoint was tenuous at best. 54

     Even so, Greeley seemed firm in his belief—or at least in his public argument—that the French example strengthened his case. He repeatedly claimed that French forestry was a success because the "laws concerning private forests [in France] impose no prescribed methods of cutting."⁸⁴ While strictly speaking true, in fact French policy tread a delicate line between restricting cutting and directly controlling landowner practices. Woolsey, the academic expert on French forestry, acknowledged this subtlety and was far more cautious in inferring lessons from France for American policy making. His conclusion, vague at best, was that practice on private lands in the United States should be "restrained by wise laws, properly administered and enforced."⁸⁵ Greeley nimbly avoided a dissenting interpretation by arguing that "the forest problem of France is totally different from the United States" and that the most important lesson to take from France should not be specific management practices but rather the more general "recognition of the obligations carried by forest ownership."⁸⁶ 55

     The war had driven the re-examination of established forestry policy, and Greeley worked to make sure that the lessons brought home by the engineers cast a favorable light on his own policy proposals. He was well poised in this respect, since he had led the Twentieth Engineers himself. It was irrelevant that he was campaigning for a political agenda that he had framed long before the war in 1914; what mattered was that the rhetorical link to the conflict supported his cooperative agenda. Much like his contemporary Schlich in Britain, Greeley was drawing on the sentiment of a new post-war political environment to advance his old policy agenda. 56

The Policy Implications of Greeley's Campaign

THE DEVELOPMENT of U.S. forestry policy during the 1920s was dominated by the conflict between Greeley's Forest Service and Pinchot's Society of American Foresters (SAF), with both sides continuously jockeying for congressional backing. Like Graves and Greeley, Pinchot had seized on the war experience to push his agenda. In 1919, immediately after the war, he chaired an SAF Committee for the Application of Forestry, which issued an influential report concluding that "only federal control of cutting on private land could assure the Nation the supply of forest products it must have to prosper."⁸⁷ Pinchot's committee justified federal regulation based on the threat of an imminent timber famine in America, a concern that had motivated dynamic federal policy making during the late nineteenth century. While Greeley viewed high market prices of timber as an industrial necessity, Pinchot feared that they signaled an impending crisis that could only be averted by ending destructive harvesting and fire on private lands.⁸⁸ 57

     On the whole, Congress and the American public were not entirely convinced by the threat of a timber crisis in the post-war era, and despite his political maneuvering, Pinchot was never able to pass the regulatory legislation he favored. With support from his allies in Congress, he did manage to block early bills orchestrated by the Forest Service, and to some extent, as forestry policy expert Paul Ellefson writes, "the 1920s struggle ... reached a stalemate."⁸⁹ However, Greeley's ultimate triumph came in persuading Congress to avoid the regulatory issue and pass legislation, in the form of the Clarke-McNary Act of 1924, which established a de facto cooperative policy for fire control, reforestation, education, and land acquisition. This was followed by the McSweeney-McNary Forest Research Act of 1928, which established new research programs at the Forest Service and provided for a comprehensive nationwide survey of all forested lands. By the end of the 1920s, Congress had passed legislation that realized the core elements of Greeley's vision as articulated in his 1914 Forest Service report. In the words of historian Michael Williams, the 1920s ended up being "full of positive, if unspectacular, policies that were eventually to lead to real progress in forest regulation, protection, and use ... [as] Greeley pushed his policies of cooperation and protection."⁹⁰ 58

     Though Greeley's agenda was established before the war, the real progress made in U.S. forestry policy during the 1920s was fundamentally shaped by the war experience. American forests were far removed from France, but the participation of the Tenth and Twentieth Engineers in the conflict brought home instructive lessons. Through the engineers, the war had posed questions for those involved in forestry at all levels—from lumbermen to academics to policy makers—and thus it prepared ground for new debate about the direction of American policy. Suddenly, in a world that threatened resource scarcity, this debate took on substantially more importance than it had a decade earlier. It was the groundwork put down in the aftermath of war that made possible such a passionate policy debate during the 1920s between Greeley and Pinchot. Neither the cooperative nor the regulatory agenda had been fundamentally reshaped by the war, but in a dramatically new world, the context for their conflict inevitably was different. Greeley appealed directly to the war experience, and in particular to the example of French forestry successes, to support his case. His rhetoric, convincingly supported by his background as head of the Twentieth Engineers, was persuasive. At the same time, the impact that the war did not have in America was equally significant. Had the United States faced intense pressure on its domestic resources during the war, Pinchot's own appeal to the prospect of "timber famine" might have proven persuasive instead. The war directed the future of American forestry both in what it had done and what it had not. 59

Conclusion

IN BOTH Britain and the United States, the direction of forestry policy in the wake of World War I was steered by the experience of the respective forestry communities during the conflict. In Britain, the wartime timber supply crisis motivated radical new initiatives for government involvement in afforestation and forest management, in a country that before the war had viewed forestry from an aesthetic and recreational perspective. In the United States, though history has frequently neglected the importance of the war in paving the way for the policy debate of the 1920s, initiatives that struggled a decade earlier found new life in the post-war era. In the end, the very lack of crisis as experienced in Britain worked against Gifford Pinchot and other conservationists who advocated strong federal regulation of private practices. Instead, William Greeley's agenda for federal cooperative programs, supported by his experience with French forestry during the war, gained favor during the 1920s. 60

     It was through influencing policy developments, rather than through battlefield destruction, that the war ultimately had its most substantial impact on forests. The U.K. Forestry Commission, established in the 1919 Forestry Act, still exists as the principal government agency responsible for forest management. Over the course of the twentieth century, its afforestation schemes have been responsible for radical change to large areas of the British countryside. The change in U.S. policy during the 1920s, if less dramatic, was equally lasting in its repercussions. As Michael Williams has commented, the period "moved the forests from a neglected adjunct of public lands, or agriculture, or a host of other industires, to a joint federal, state, and industry responsibility."⁹¹ The foundations laid in the wake of war were to have fundamental and lasting importance. 61

     In both countries, a crucial feature of post-war policy was its reliance on pre-war professional ideas. In Britain it was Schlich's agenda for afforestation, which stretched back as far as his work in 1897, which found new favor and legislative realization in response to the war. In America it was Greeley's principles for federal cooperation—first formulated even before 1910—which guided his campaign in the 1920s. Despite the direct engagement that both Schlich and Greeley had with the war, Schlich through the British crisis and Greeley through the Twentieth Engineers, there was remarkably little change in their ideas. Instead the key change was in the public domain, which enabled the legislative enactment of old proposals. 62

     Such crisis-driven change calls into question the way professional expertise may be adopted into forestry or environmental policy.⁹² Ideas that previously had seemed outlandish, or at the very least uninteresting, can gain new favor as circumstances change. The result may be beneficial—by ressurrecting useful but neglected professional ideas. Equally, it may lead to more questionable change—by encouraging policies that are ill-suited except in time of crisis. The debate about the legacy of post-war policies in Britain and the United States is not closed; arguments continue about the costs and benefits of Britains plantations, and about the relative merits of regulatory legislation in the United States. Whatever the case, a central feature of a national crisis such as war is its impact on policy development, and the repercussions for the environment in such times deserve more attention. The environmental impact of war may first bring to mind images of battlefield destruction: the burning oil fields of the Middle Eastern desert, the devastated jungles of Southeast Asia, or the cratered battlefields of Western Europe. These are the most visible effects and seem the most immediately relevant, but the influence of war experiences in shaping views of resources use, and in setting the direction of environmental policy, has the potential to reverberate far longer and far further afield. 63

A. Joshua West is a research student at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, in the faculty of earth sciences and geography. His interests include the role of professional scientific knowledge in environmental public policy.

Notes
This article was written when I was a student in the Yale University Program in International Studies, under the supervision of Gaddis Smith, and is dedicated to the memory of the late Joseph Miller, of the Yale School of Forestry. Comments from two anonymous reviewers and Adam Rome substantially improved the manuscript.
^1. Edmund Russell, War and Nature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 2.

^2. Percival S. Ridsdale, "French Forests for Our Army," American Forests 25 (April 1919): 963; Percival S. Ridsdale, "War's Destruction of British Forests," American Forests 25 (May 1919): 1027.

^3. See, for example, N. D. G. James, A History of English Forestry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981); M. Winter, Rural Politics: Policies for Agriculture, Forestry, and the Environment (London: Routledge, 1996); and A. Gilg, Countryside Planning: The First Half Century (London, Routledge, 1996).

^4. A survey of British forestry around the time of World War I is offered by E. P. Stebbing, Commercial Forestry in Britain (London: John Murray, 1919), 13–31.

^5. Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1986).

^6. John Simpson, The New Forestry (Sheffield, England: Pawson & Brailsford, 1900), 37.

^7. Arthur R. M. Lower, Great Britain's Woodyard: British America and the Timber Trade, 1763–1867 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1973).

^8. Great Britain Forestry Commission. First Annual Report of the Forestry Commissioners (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1921), 11.

^9. Ibid., 51.

^10. Earl of Selbourne, as quoted by Ridsdale, "War's Destruction of British Forests," 1031.

^11. See, for example, John Evelyn, Silva: A Discourse of Forest-Trees (London: Martyn and Allestry, 1664).

^12. Gabriel Plattes, Practical Husbandry Improved (Printed in London for Edward Thomas, 1656, copy in Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.).

^13. An interesting historical analysis of British forestry during this period is provided by R. G. Albion, Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652–1862 (1926; reprint, Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1965).

^14. Lord Henry Home Kames, The Gentleman Farmer (1776; 5th ed., Edinburgh: Bell & Bradfute, 1802), 215.

^15. William Schlich first argued for a scheme of afforestation for Britain in an 1886 pamphlet but later admitted humorously that, "before that pamphlet had left the press ... it was presumed, shelved." See, William Schlich, Schlich's Manual of Forestry, 3rd ed., 5 vols. (London: Bradbury, Agnew, and Co, 1906), 1:168 and 1:183.

^16. Ibid., 1:167-168.

^17. Simpson, The New Forestry.

^18. Robert Miller, State Forestry for the Axe (London: The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1981), 40, gives a general review of the report of the commission.

^19. An interesting exchange of opinion took place in the pages of Transactions of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society XXII (1909): 121-200.

^20. J. F. Annand, "The Erosion and Afforestation Royal Commission Report," Transactions of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society XXII (1909): 188.

^21. William Schlich, "Review of the Second Report of the Forestry Commission," Quarterly Journal of Forestry III (April 1909): 156–157; John Stirling-Maxwell, "Report of the Royal Commission on Afforestation," Transactions of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society XXII (1909): 186.

^22. See, for example, J. Nisbet, "Afforestation and Timber-Planting in Great Britain and Ireland," Journal of the Royal Society of Arts LVII: 386–397.

^23. Great Britain Forestry Commission, First Annual Report, 11.

^24. Earl of Selbourne, as quoted by Ridsdale, "War's Destruction of British Forests," 1031.

^25. Henry S. Graves to General John J. Pershing, 6 March 1923, Henry Solon Graves Papers, MS #249 [hereafter, HSG Papers], Sterling Memorial Library Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. [hereafter, Yale M&A].

^26. Ridsdale relates an interesting anecdote about how the British secured timber from Sweden by threatening to withhold important commodities if they were not sold timber. The Swedes, concerned that the Germans would not allow the transport of timber across the North Sea, in turn threatened to withold the export of iron ore to Germany unless the Germans would allow the transport of timber from Sweden to Britain. The result was a rare three-way agreement between the adversaries mediated through a neutral power. See, "War's Destruction of British Forests," 1027–28.

^27. Ridsdale, "War's Destruction of British Forests," 1028.

^28. Ibid., 1027. There was actually a total of 3 million forested acres in Britain before the war. See, E. P. Stebbing, as quoted by Percival S. Ridsdale, "Shot, Shell, and Soldiers Devastate Forests," American Forestry 22 (June 1916): 338. However, only a portion of this land, about 1 million acres, was considered productive from a timber standpoint. Ridsdale's figures for wartime harvests come in large part from British Royal estimates, which appear elsewhere in the Acland Report, the Forestry Act of 1919, and the First Annual Report of the Forestry Commission, among other sources.

^29. Rackham, History of the Countryside, 93.

^30. This was made only more challenging because the British had no pre-existing administrative structure to handle domestic timber production. The solution was that, in November 1915, the government established the Home Grown Timber Committee, which was given quite a liberal license to purchase woodlands and harvest timber in the national interest. One of the greatest challenges to the committee was a shortage of labor, and so by June 1916, the committee had organized, with the help of War Commissioner Lord Kitchener, the 224th Canadian Forestry Battalion which, along with other Canadian troops and German war prisoners, worked extensively in the British forests throughout the war. By the end of the war, the British employed over 23,000 men in timber operations—this, in fact, had become Britain's first major forestry initiative of the twentieth century (Ridsdale, "War's Destruction of British Forests")!

^31. Quarterly Journal of Forestry VIII–X (1914–1916).

^32. "Reviews and Notices of Books," Quarterly Journal of Forestry X (October 1916): 288.

^33. William Schlich, "Forestry in the United Kingdom (The Case Restated)," Quarterly Journal of Forestry X (July 1916): 174.

^34. Ibid.

^35. Sir William Schlich, "Forestry and the War," Quarterly Journal of Forestry IX (Jan 1915): 6.

^36. In 1916, Schlich advocated "the afforestation of not less that three million acres" through a combination of government involvement with private proprieters and municipal/state acquisition of lands; throughout his previous career he had made virtually identical suggestions.

^37. "British Timber Supplies and the Safety of the Realm." Quarterly Journal of Forestry XII (July 1918): 194.

^38. Report of the Forestry Sub-Committee of the Reconstruction Committee (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1918), 4–5.

^39. Interestingly, the primary goal of the Forestry Commission remained one of maintaining a strategic stockpile of standing timber through 1957, so that the motivation provided by the World War I timber crisis remained critically influential for British forestry for decades. See, Miller, State Forestry for the Axe, 48. The implementation of the Forestry Act during the inter-war period is summarized in Great Britain Forestry Commission, Post-War Forest Policy (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1943).

^40. Miller, State Forestry for the Axe, 42–44. The British did, interestingly, establish a strategic stockpile of timber in 1939 in anticipation of then-imminent World War II.

^41. Ibid., 41.

^42. See Thomas Cox, Robert Maxwell, Phillip Thomas, and Joseph Malone, This Well-Wooded Land (Lincoln: University of Nebraska