afford to take long views, and hitherto, as already stated, the timber yield of our private plantations has been most unsatisfactory. The Acland Committee told us 10:

The problem of bringing woods in private ownership to a uniform state of high productivity has not yet been satisfactorily solved, though many countries have attacked it energetically.

Germany, perhaps, has attacked this problem as energetically as any, but there, whilst the total yield per acre of all the German forests when the vast privately owned forests were included was only 27 cubic feet in 1899 and 1900, the lowest yield from the State forests was 53 cubic feet in Prussia. It may be that the spread of interest and the adoption of more scientific methods, coupled with conditions attaching to grants made by the Commission, may rapidly raise the standard of private afforestation in this country, but we are entitled to require a more scientific system of planting as a condition of the grants that are made. In these days of unemployment, however, and in view of the small amount of grants, it could not fairly be suggested that the Commission should be meticulous or harassing. Nevertheless, the grants do afford the only machinery available for improving the standard of private planting. They appear to have covered about half the cost involved, and there can be no doubt, I think, that the money has been well spent, certainly vastly better spent than it would have been by using the same amount for the outright payment of benefits with no useful return either to the worker or the community. The total cost per acre to the Commission itself of planting and weeding, the cost of plants and all preparatory work, averaged about 7l. 10s. per acre, and the grants in aid were up to 41. 1os. per acre in the case of corporate bodies and up to 3l. for private individuals.

It would, I think, be difficult to improve upon the summary which the Reconstruction Committee gave of the relative functions of the State and of the private planter in the case of forestry. Essentially the difference depends upon the human fact that the life of an individual is short, whilst the life of the State is long. Their finding was as follows:

results, they also may not be afraid to venture if the State gives a reasonable amount of encouragement. We do not believe that State afforestation means expensive and inefficient action. On the contrary, we have the long experience of all the countries in which forestry has reached a high pitch of development, and the promising methods of management in certain of the Crown woods of recent years, to prove the opposite. The success of forestry depends very largely upon the continuity of methods of treatment over long periods, and upon the systematic collection and analysis of data over well-defined areas and under varied conditions. This is essentially work for the State.

There is a further and wider aspect of afforestation policy. It is not dealt with by the Commission, save in the Summary of Timber Imports for 1924, but it arises very definitely out of their Report. From time to time I have used some of my leisure in looking over the reports that were made to me as Minister of Reconstruction in 1917 and 1918, but in none of them have the forecasts been fulfilled with a more literal, and almost uncanny, accuracy than in this matter of afforestation. Our imports of timber and wood of all kinds cost us a little over 34,000,000l. in 1913, but in 1924 practically an identical quantity of material cost rather more than 66,000,000l. This extra 32,000,000l. is payment for material at least a third of which we could grow at home if we had the mind and perseverance to do so. A figure like this seems to make the short-sightedness of the Geddes Committee, in seeking to save 200,00ol. by arresting an effort to stem such an appalling drain on our resources, assume a grotesque disproportion. It is, indeed, so pitiful that further comment is impossible. The imports of timber also absorb 13 per cent. of every ton of shipping that comes into British ports. And we ought never to forget the year 1917.

One of the most prophetic and detailed Reports on our future timber position was made to the Government in 1918 by Mr. E. P. Stebbing. In that Report Mr. Stebbing prophesied that it might be that in the post-war period our annual wood imports might well come to cost us 73,000,000l., and in view of the fact that, notwithstanding the bad trade last year, the cost in 1924 was nearly 4,000,000l. more than in 1923, it is evident that his forecast is likely to come true.

It so happens that the 10,276,000 loads imported in 1924 are a little less than the imports of 1913 alone, but nearly identical with the average of 10,204,000 loads of the five pre-war years. I have not available any critical and informed analysis of the later figures of our overseas supplies, but the analyses by Mr. Stebbing and by the Reconstruction Committee of the imports of 1913 are, no doubt, applicable to-day. Of the 10,431,000 loads imported in 1913 more than 9,000,000 came from five sources, as follows:

For some years the imports from Norway and Sweden have been substantially declining, and the annual cut, even before the excessive fellings of the war period, had exceeded the annual growth. From France also, for similar reasons, increased supplies cannot be looked for. The United States also are sending us less and less timber. Notwithstanding their own vast forests, they are increasingly importing from Canada, and the governing fact of geography is determining the current of Canadian supplies. The course of it is sufficiently indicated by the following short table :

Owing mainly to this deflection of Canadian produce, the proportion of our timber supplies from Empire sources fell from 22 per cent. in 1899 to 10 per cent. in 1913. In all these cases also the war period and its resulting conditions have operated to our detriment. With the most active forest policy at home, we cannot look for any great measure of relief from home sources for a considerable number of years, and it is on that account that all the authorities directed our attention with increasing emphasis to the Russian and Siberian market.

The Acland Committee said:

Russia, as will be evident from the facts already given, is now the crux of the whole question. She is, and has been for several years, the only source on which we could, under present conditions, rely to make good the decline in our imports of coniferous timber from other countries and meet our ever-expanding demand.

In the twenty years preceding the war the imports of Russian and Siberian timber more than doubled, until at last, as we have seen, they came to equal the imports of all other countries put together. Nevertheless, the mighty forests of these lands are as yet almost untapped. We are told 11 that the total extent of true forest land in Russia and Siberia is estimated at 814,000 square miles, or nearly three times as great as the total timber land of the Dominion of Canada.

Mr. Stebbing went into great detail in the description and location of the Russian and Siberian forests, and into the ways and means of obtaining concessions for their development, and it appears that a great proportion could advantageously be worked from the Archangel area. This is not the place to criticise the policy we appear to be pursuing at present in regard to Russia, but, hateful as some of the methods of its present rulers undoubtedly are, our dislike of them should not blind us to the unescapable fact that any attempt to put Russia into a sort of trade Coventry is the way to produce a timber famine in Britain. Full details of all these things are available to the Government, and it might perhaps be useful if the Foreign Office were reminded of some of them, and better still, perhaps, if some of those newspapers that devote so much space to the advertisement of Monsieur Zinovieff and a handful of Communists at home were to turn their skilful propagandists on to a discussion of the best way of securing the development of these vast resources which, for a long time to come, will be of such great importance to our own people. For the moment, however, those of us who think or speak like this are as 'voices crying in the wilderness,' but the danger involved in any policy that leads to the curtailment or insufficient development of those supplies certainly emphasises the importance of pressing on with the work at home.

First and last, however, I think we are justified in insisting that afforestation schemes should not be looked at simply and solely from the point of view of the cash return they are likely to give, although at present prices they would no doubt be justified on that basis alone. They produce social and national values that may be even more important than the production of the wood itself. These values are expressed in terms of a healthy and contented population as well as in terms of wealth, and the importance of them warrants, in conclusion, the quotation of the excellent summary of the case that was made by the Acland Committee in 1918 12:

1925

ENGLISH POOR RELIEF METHODS THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

SOME years ago a distinguished foreign Poor Law administrator, who had long cherished a profound admiration of England and English ways, paid us a visit. He came as a student, he was careful to explain: he wished to see for himself how the work done in his country by the department of which he was the chief was done here; he wished, too, to learn, so far as he could from what he saw, new methods of working, new lines on which to organise. Moreover, he was, as he frankly confessed, curious to know how the treatment meted out to the poor in England compared with the treatment meted out to them in his own country; whether, in fact, the poor as a whole fared very much better here than there. That they must in many respects fare better here than there he was sure, not only because England spends much more money per head on her poor than his country, but also because she has had wider experience in dealing with them officially.

He began his investigations by paying a visit to one of our model Poor Law schools. He was delighted with the house, and little wonder, for it was a fine large building standing in a beautiful garden. Every room was prettily decorated; even the bath-rooms were painted a delicate green, and every room was as neat and clean as hands could make it. His face beamed with pleasure as he went from room to room, with pleasure and something akin to amazement. Never before had he seen so fine a Poor Law institution, he declared, in his odd medley of three different tongues. 'Why, were I seeking a school for my own son, I could not wish for a better,' he exclaimed.

He watched with keen eyes the boys at their sports; he examined their drawings, listened while a lecture was being given to them. He even looked at their clothes and tasted the food they were to have for dinner. And he was lavish with his praise of everything. He pronounced the whole institution perfect, in fact, alike in organisation and management. So far as he could judge, the teaching was excellent, he said; and so were the manners and demeanour of the boys. And he could speak on the