Trees or Starvation Some congratulations are deserved by the Men
of the Trees, so called, on reaching their silver jubilee, which is suitably celebrated in the issue of Trees and the New Earth, from Abbotsbury, Dorset. The starvation of the world has been brought nearer by the destruction of trees which has led to direct and immediate denudation. The goat and the timber merchant and arson have destroyed several civilisations, most dramatically perhaps in North Africa. The climate itself may be disastrously altered by the loss of trees over and above the protection of the top soil. In this happy island we have been preserved from the worst physical evil of the world, the most serious enemy of civilisation itself, by a moderate rainfall and—till lately, at any rate—sensible forms of hus- bandry ; but we need our trees, and there is a pleasing sound about one article in the "New Earth Charter ": "We believe in the traditional ideal that our fields should be 'fields of the woods,' by which is meant landscape farming of every valley and plain, with woodlands in high places, shelter belts, orchards of mixed species, and hedgerow trees everywhere." The present rapid felling of trees is associated also with a campaign against hedges, both essential to what is most English in England.
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