Popular sentiment in Germany considers the forest to be the one large
piece of property which has not yet been completely portioned off. In
contrast to field, meadow, and garden, every one has a certain right to
the forest, even if it consists merely in being able to run about in it
at pleasure. In the right, or the permission, to gather wood and dry
leaves and to pasture cattle, in the distribution of the so-called
"loose-wood" from the parish forests, and such acts, lie the historic
foundation of an almost communist tradition. Where else has anything of
the kind been perpetuated except in the case of the forest? The latter
is the root of truly German social conditions. In very truth the forest,
with us, has not yet been completely portioned off; therefore every
political agitator who wishes to pay out in advance to the people a
little bit of "prosperity" as earnest-money of the promised universal
prosperity, immediately lays hands upon the forest. By means of the
forest, and by no other, you can substantially preach communism to the
German peasant. It is well known that the idea of the forest as private
property was introduced at a late date and gained ground gradually among
the German people.
Forest, pasturage, water, are, in accordance with a primitive German
principle of jurisprudence, intended for the common use of all
inhabitants of the same district.
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