In Anhalt-Dessau it was decided, in an ordinance of the year 1852, that
all oak-trees standing on private ground should, in accordance with
ancient custom, remain the property of the sovereign. In this conception
the contrast between forest and field is an absolutely ideal one; even
the separate forest tree is in itself still a forest and has
forest-rights, just as in localities where all the forests have been cut
down the peasants still frequently designate a single remaining tree by
the title of their "parish forest."

The political economists argue that the amount of wood which can be
supplied by our present forests is by no means too great for the
satisfaction of the demand--that, if anything, it is too small. Those,
however, whose enmity to the forest is based on political principles
detail to us the yearly increasing substitutes for wood, and point
triumphantly to the not far distant time when forests will no longer be
needed, when all forest land can be turned into cultivated land, so that
every glebe of earth in civilized Europe shall produce sufficient
nourishment for a man. This idea of seeing every little patch of earth
dug up by human hands strikes the imagination of every natural man as
something appallingly uncanny; it is especially repugnant to the German
spirit. When that comes to pass it will be high time for the day of
judgment to dawn. Emmanuel Geibel, in his poem _Mythus_, has symbolized
this natural aversion to the extreme measures of a civilization which
would absorb every form of wild nature. He creates a legend about the
demon of steam, who is chained and forced to do menial service. 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