ished that we still have a whole group of regular forest lands. A
nation which still holds fast to the forest as a common public
possession along with the field that is divided off into private
property, has not only a present but also a future. Thus in Russia's
impenetrable forests, whose inner thickets are, in the words of the poet
Mickiewicz, such a deep mystery that they are as little known to the eye
of-the huntsman as the depths of the sea are known to the eve of the
fisherman--in these forests is hidden the future of the great Slav
Empire; while in the English and French provinces, where there is no
longer a genuine forest, we are confronted by an already partially
extinct national life. The United States of America whose society is
permeated with materialism, and whose strange national life is made up
of a mixture of youthful energy and of torpor, would rapidly hurry on to
their destruction if they did not have in the background the primeval
forest which is raising up a fresher, more vigorous, race to take the
place of the rapidly degenerating inhabitants of the coast-lands. The
wilderness is an immense dormant capital in ready cash, possessing which
as a basis the North Americans may, for a long time to come, risk the
most daring social and political stock-jobbing. But woe to them should
they consume the capital itself!

The German forest and the privileges and compulsory service connected
with it are a last surviving fragment of the Middle Ages. Nowhere are
the ruins of the feudal elements more plainly visible than in the forest
regulations; the forest alone assures the rural population--in true
medieval style--a subsidy for its existence, untouched by the fury of
competition and small-farming.

Therefore do the demagogues so often try to change the war "about" the
forest into a war "against" the forest; they know that the forest must
first be hewn down before the Middle Ages can be wiped out of Germany,
and, on that account, the forest always fares worse than anything else
in every popular uprising. For though in our rapidly moving century
there is an average interval of fifteen years allowed between one
revolution and another, yet a good forest tree requires a much longer
time to reach full growth. At least the incalculable loss suffered by
our forest property in the year 1848, through lavish waste, plundering,
and wanton ruination, has certainly, up to the present time, not been
made good by natural means.