ENPages
This page is blank
This page is blank
[Illustration]
THE AFTERMATH OF THE AXE.
43
injuries that this country must incur through the destruction of the native bush must bear more heavily upon the next generation than on this, and even though the benefits of Afforestation or Reforestation must be secured by our sons and grandsons rather than by ourselves, I do not believe that there are many New Zealanders ready to ask that singularly sordid and futire question "what has Posterity done for us that we shoud undergo sacrifices and hardships for its sake?" I prefer to believe that in this beautiful land, the vast majority of men and women feel as keenly as I do the responsibility entailed upon us all of leaving our natural heritage no less beautiful and healthy, and fertile and productve, than we found it. To those who feel the truth of this, the case for Afforestation and Reforestation needs no eleaborate argument to enforce it. And even those who pride themselves on taking a sternly practical view of life, and who refuse to prefer romantic sentiment to material gain may well consider if on such evidence as I have laid before them, the policy of afforestation is not urged upon them only by a sense of public duty, but by a sense of the necessity for that self-preservation which, as we are proverbially and justly told, is the first Law of Nature.
This page is blank