FORESTRY AND POLITICS

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 18, 20 July 1918, Page 6

FORESTRY AND POLITICS

Considering that the world is at war, it would, no doubt, be unfair to ask what effect.the Forestry League has had on public and political opinion. This is a time when, in all matters not directly bearing upon the war, the public is apathetic and the politicians are deeply dug in; and as, in the last analysis, the war is the thing that counts, no one can be very much surprised at the general listlessness that makes all private enthusiasm look like a forlorn hope. We therefore are not inclined to put a measuring rod'upon the work of the Forestry League, but rather to greet it as an institution in infancy, one to be fostered, and one to make its mark in the time to come when rulers are at last called on to give an account of their extended stewardship. Viewed from this angle, the annual meeting of the Forestry League was neither better nor worse thap. might have been expected. The pace was set by Mr. D. E. Hutchins, a positive reformer who has at least breathed some life, into the dry. bones of forest theory, and whose challenge to preconceived notions seems to have provoked in the owners thereof remarkably little reply. A moderating yet progressive influence was supplied by the President of the League, Sir James Wilson, whose public-spiritedhess is marked by caution, but not by political timidity. To listen to. the proceedings came two Ministers of the Crown and the Chairman of the National Efficiency Board. The Chairman did not speak, and the two Ministers spoke without making any very weighty contribution to the consideration of the matter in hand. As is the fashion nowadays, they lived right up to the high ideal of saying nothing that they could possibly be sorry for.

The crux of the situation is reached when it is seen that one of those Ministers attended as Commissioner of State Forests, the other as Minister for Lands. Land-settlement policy and forestry policy have points of conflict, and hitherto the former has had almost, if not quite, a walk-over. Sir James Wilson appeal's to think that the creation of a Forestry Department, with a Forestry Minister (or Commissioner)' at its head, will make the fight a little more even. It is to be hoped that he is right. But the fundamental fact is that landowners and land-seekers have votes and forests have not, and . the Forestry League will need to do more than create a new department with a political head of its own. Considering that the political habit in New Zealand is to follow and not to lead, the Forestry League must adhere to its prime purpose of developing a public opinion of which politics will take heed, and by which political opinion may be moulded. Only by educating the electors in general on the evils of the past policy—which are quite as bad as has been alleged by Mr. Hutchins- -will forest conservation and re-genr-ition and afforestation receive fair play; by no other means will the case be decided fairly when it comes before the court of appeal, whether that court ■bo Cabinet or Parliament. This* remark is not confined to the present Cabinet or the present Parliament; it is true of all Cabinets and Parliaments that have been, and they are not in the least likely to change their characteristics in the future. The impersonal national interest that should have saved so much of the native forest in ■ the past, but which waso overborne by political pressure, needs powerful reinforcement outside Parliament and within the electorate itself. This is, we understand, the prime purpose of the Forestry League, the sine qua non; and we hope that it will continue manfully to shoulder the heavy burden it has taken up.