Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/131

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TIMBER
123

"Put it over? Oh, no!" shaking her head slowly. "No, not yet."

"You have grown a forest."

"That's only a part. It is all Foraker's Folly for most people and the end is to make all people understand that—Foolish Foraker was not foolish."

"I see," he said vaguely.

"Are you sure that you do?" Pause. "I'm not. You're too young," flushing slightly again, "in experience, I mean. You're only weeks old in this; some men are life old in the same experience and they won't see.

"It's not this tract, not these few thousand acres my father wanted men to see. It's something else: he wanted to show what all this land might be that they call waste land, that they look on as a burden and an eye-sore. Those plains down the river are useless now; they are a burden and horrible to look at. It's not the fault of the land; it's the fault of men."

She sat up and her manner became a bit more vehement.

"Did you see Louvain?"

"No. But I got to Rheims."

"Do you see any parallel? No—of course you don't. You don't see the heel of the Him on these pine barrens. You don't visualize the devastator, the leveler of all that was beautiful and useful. Oh, we were Prussians, we Americans! We were ruthless, heedless. All we saw was forests and a market for their products, so we butchered. We only saw the hour, only thought about personal gain. It wasn't the conscious Prussian, the deliberate destroyer; it was the Hun in our hearts, the spirit of the age: thoughtless youth, my father used to say. Our pine went out to build the country where cheap lumber for