TIMBER IN WAR

Evening Star, Issue 23831, 11 March 1941, Page 4

TIMBER IN WAR

GREAT QUANTITIES REQUIRES Some thousands of miles from the battlefrout, a mini in a steel helmet looks anxiously skywards. Steel-hol-meted like .himself, his three companions follow his gaze. There is a watchful silence; then a warning shout. The men leap to safety in a shower of falling debris. The ground heaves and the air vibrates with a shivering crash. The virgin forests have given up yet another tree —another length of timber—to serve the needs of an Empire at war. Do you realise how important is timber to the war effort, the part that it is playing for Australia, and its importance in the international sphere? (asks Mr Murry Gosper, Director of Timber Development in New South Wales). Listen to what Reich-Marshal Goering. Commissioner for the German Four-year Plan, had to say on the subject. When opening the German Forestry Conference at Berlin in July, 1939, just prior to the outbreak of war, he claimed that inconceivable quantities of wood were needed for many years to come in order to carry out Germany’s programme of rearmament and building construction. Significantly, Goering admitted that it was hoped that the incorporation of Austria, Sudetenland, and the Protectorate into the Reich would ease the situation, as the total forest lands of the Reich were thereby increased considerably. It had since been found that the economic recovery of these areas had increased the consumption of timber, so that none was available for the needs of the Old Reich.

Then came Poland and the greatest timber grab in history. It has now been claimed that one of Hitler’s prime incentives for. the seizure of Poland was the abundance of timber resources in the vast forests of that country. As a result of the invasion, Germany was now richer to the extent of some 21 million acres of forests. In addition, Polish timber supplies had been successfullyrcut oft from Great Britain. But, colossal supplies of timber are necessary for a war. Hitler looked with hungry eye for further forest lands. Was there any need to look further afield than the great forest wealth of Russia, Finland, and Sweden? And, by the closing of the Baltic, Germany become Russia’s sole customer for timber.

The gaining of these enormous supplies of the world’s timber was a doublebarrelled success. Great Britain, also, required great stocks of wood for war purposes. Normally, she imported some 9ft per cent of her timber. Most of this came from Finland, Russia, Sweden, and Poland. But now all of these sources of supply were gone. Hitler’s timber grab had indeed left its mark on Great Britain’s war effort. Rumania, also, Lad more treasures than oil. As recently as April, 1940, the Rumanian Senate leased Germany some 83,400 acres of forests in the stratepically-important area of Falticcni. This lease, mark you, was granted despite strong opposition from the Rumanian General Staff. Africa, too, has not escaped the notice of the hawkeyed German Forester, " But why all this bother to keep the wood heap stacked? These are not the days of .the Armada, it is the twentieth

century, and wars are now fought with tanks, shells, and bombs. It is the steel age, and the forests must be cleared away for the settler and the dairy herds! There may, however, be something in the Nazi technique. Perhaps it is wc who “ cannot see the wood for the trees.”

Great quantities of timber are required for the construction of cam]) hutments, hospitals, storehouses, ’ field shelters, and for tent polos and tent pegs, and also for furniture. Various timbers and plywoods are necessary for pontoons, spars, portable huts, bridging timbers, trestles, and poles for telephone and telegraph wires and for power lines Army transport calls for timber for lorries, limbers, box ears, and tenders; railway sleepers are needed for temporary rail heads, and also for now roads-

In defence work, timber is required for concrete form-work, dug-out props, sap linings, and revetments. Wooden stakes and pickets are used for barbed wire entanglements. Wood is needed for stocks of rifles and light machine guns; handles for spades, shovels, forks, and entrenching tools; axe and hammer shafts; brushes of all kinds; mops for gun cleaning; mauls and mallets; tool handles, cars and sweeps, and so oh. Millions upon millions or wooden boxes and cases of all kinds are required for Army supplies, such as ammunition and food. The Navy makes great demands upon timber supplies. Sides of planking are used for decking. Even a submarine has about 24,000 super feet of timber in it somewhere. In the Air Force, timber is used for radio beacon towers and for aeroplane

hangars. A special type of timber—* called “ improved ” wood—is used for the manufacture of propellers and also as structural members in modern ■planes. On the “ home front,” timber is necessary for concrete form-work in the construction of air raid shelters, for “ black-out ” screening, for boarding up the faces of buildings and statues to protect them from damage, and for propping up walls of damaged buildings. Most of the world’s chief trees grow in the British' Empire’s 2,000,000 square miles of forests, and, in India alone there are over 2,500 • different sipecies. The forest wealth -of the dominions is practically unlimited as far as production is concerned, but slopping the timber to England is rather a difficult problem.