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this book some truly terrifying pictures of man flying in the face of Nature, ruthlessly
uprooting and burning the very stuff that holds the world together: and no less terrible
pictures of Nature making her implacable reply. Man strips the forests of China: Nature
swirls away in the Yellow River every year 2,500,000 tons of the soil on which man
might live. Man strips the western prairies to the bone; Nature hands him a dust bowl
. . . . . When improvidence goes so far that one edition of an American newspaper
consumes twenty-four acres of forest, it is not difficult to imagine a too-near time when
the plight of those Negroes (a tragedy on the Gold Coast) shall be the plight of millions
of mankind. Only knowledge, implementing a rational co-operation with Nature, can
avert such a disaster; and I am not aware of any writer today who spreads that
knowledge more fruitfully than Mr. St. Barbe Baker" (Howard Spring).
A distinguished engineer some twelve years ago, warned America that unless
something drastic and immediate was done to prevent the squandering of the soil, that
America had not another 100 years before it of virile national existence. Another
authority as late as 1946 pointed out that one-eighth of the crop land of the U.S.A. had
been ruined by erosion, another eighth almost ruined, on a further quarter erosion is at
work, and that in 100 years from now the United States will not be able to sustain a living
man.
Mr. St. Barbe Baker says:
"The red lights are against us in our reckless career. To continue to rape the earth and
fight for dwindling supplies of food and timber, spells destruction . . . . . Let us remember
that the empires of Babylon, Syria, Persia and Carthage were destroyed by the advance of
floods and deserts caused by the increasing clearing of forests for farmland."
Much more to the same effect could be quoted, but what has been given is sufficient,
not only to emphasize the extreme importance that must be attached to trees in their
influence upon climate, soil and fertility, but to reveal once more to our wondering eyes,
how completely abreast of the times is the Word of the living God. He knew what man is
but now learning through centuries of folly for food or ill man's destiny was intimately
associated with trees.
When the great day of the Lord shall come and judgment is about to fall on the earth
we read:
"Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of
our God in their foreheads" (Rev. 7: 3).
When the storm breaks, we read:
"The first angel sounded . . . . . and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green
grass was burnt up" (Rev. 8: 7).
Again when the bottomless pit is opened and the scourge of supernatural locusts is let
loose on the earth, we read:
"And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither
any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in
their foreheads" (Rev. 9: 4).