The
latter will break his bonds again and with his primitive titanic
strength, which has been slumbering in the heart of the world, he will
destroy the very earth itself when once the whole ball has been covered
with the magic network of the railroads. Before that time all the
forests will have been turned into cultivated land.
The advocates of the forest resort to a feeble method of defense when
they demand the preservation of the present moderate forest area solely
on economic grounds. The social-political reasons certainly weigh quite
as heavy. Hew down the forest and you will at the same time destroy the
historic _bourgeois_ society.--In the destruction of the contrast
between field and forest you are taking a vital element away from German
nationality. Man does not live by bread alone; even if we no longer
required any wood we should still demand the forest. The German people
need the forest as a man needs wine, although for our mere necessities
it might be quite sufficient if the apothecary alone stored away ten
gallons in his cellar. If we do not require any longer the dry wood to
warm our outer man, then all the more necessary will it be for the race
to have the green wood, standing in all its life and vigor, to warm the
inner man.
In our woodland villages--and whoever has wandered through the German
mountains knows that there are still many genuine woodland villages in
the German Fatherland--the remains of primitive civilization are still
preserved to our national life, not only in their shadiness but also in
their fresh and natural splendor.
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