Crosby High School - Blue and White Yearbook (Waterbury, CT)

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With these two examples in mind, we come to see the grave necessity that faces us. We of the home front must begin before it is too late to estimate the value of our natural resources and to take immediate steps to preserve them. For they form the backlog of any chance we have of winning the war, and it very well may be that in the last analysis they will win the war. Q If you accept this theory, and you muff, then it follows that one of the most important contributions that you and I can make is to build up and put into practice a whole-hearted belief in the efficacy of saving. Save, Preserve, Salvage, these are the shibboleths of the day. America is at war. It needs every bit of paper and metal that we can save to carry on its mightypieffort. Today more than ever we begin to sense the need for conservation. I wonder if you realize that during the last fifty years our natural resources have been rapidly nearing exhaustion. For instance, it has been estimated that at the present rate of consumption our forests will last a few decades, our hard coal fifty years, and. our soft coal one hundred years. At any time these would be facts of vital significance. Under the stress of war when no man can determine how much of these materials we shall need immediately, the significance increases to alarming proportions. It is true that you are not now being asked

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TREE ORATION It would be impertinent of me to address this group of classmates if the subject assigned were not a vital one. Unlike many other wars, this one is signified by the term total , which means that every one of us is involved. We are fighting, literally, on two fronts, the actual lighting front, and the home front, and it is inescapably true that the side that will win will be the one with the greatest resources, particularly natural resources. America has always been wasteful of its natural wealth. We felt that we had plenty, and some to spare. It was only when nature itself revolted that wg took the question of conservation seriously. The tragedy of the Dust Bowl, which brought consternation to many mid-western states, brought home vividly the fact that our agricultural methods were wasteful. It was proved beyond a doubt that men could not commit outrages of this sort without paying the grievous penalty. In the realm of forests, the same thing appears. We have spent billions of dollars and will spend more on flood control which nature handled very efficiently before we stripped the waterways of the forests which held back the freshet streams in spring. P Q fN Q f5 '-w Q 'N -4 .J

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individually to save coal and trees, but you are being asked to save their by- products and thereby release greater and greater amounts of the materials at the source. Q It would be unfair to say that we have never made an attempt to save our natural resources. For at least two well-known Americans were far- sighted enough to see our dilemma and to make provision for it. Both Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot formulated and actually carried out plans whereby millions of acres in more than forty states were set aside for reforestation. Gur own president has set in motion legislation which will save countless acres now useless in the Dust Bowl area, our Department of Agriculture is working feverishly to save what is left of fertile lands and put more under cultivation, other departments are building dams and power plants to harness power formerly wasted. And so we see that at least for fifty years Americans have been working on the project of saving and now it has come down to us. Our good sense tells us that we need to save. The immediate threat of destruction to all that we hold dear demands that we must save. In conclusion, I ask in all sincerity that you not only save those items that from time to time will be called for to speed the war effort, but that I 0 Q KN LJ f'N H Q .1