IN A FOREST OF FRANCE
_France, May 26th._
It was in "A forest of France," as the programme had it. The road ran
down a great aisle with the tall elm trees reaching to the sky, and
stretching their long green fingers far above, like the slender pillars
of a Gothic cathedral. Down the narrow road below sagged a big
motor-bus, painted grey, like a battleship; and, after it, a huge grey
motor-lorry; and, in front and behind them, an odd procession of
motor-cars of all sizes, bouncing awkwardly from one hollow in the road
to another.
Out of the dark interior of the motor-bus, as we passed it, there groped
a head with a grey slouch hat. It came slowly round on its long, brown,
wrinkled neck until it looked into our car. "Hey, mate," it said, "is
this the track to the races?" Then it smiled at the landscape in general
and withdrew into the interior like a snail into its shell. In this bus
was an Australian Brass Band.
We drew up where there was a collection of motor-cars, lorries, and odd
riding horses along the roadside, exactly as you might see at the picnic
races. We struck inland up one of those glades which the French
foresters leave at intervals running from side to side of their
well-managed forests. The green moss sank like a soft carpet beneath our
feet. The little watergutters bubbled beneath the twigs as we trod
across them. The cowslips and anemones nodded as our boots brushed them.
Hundreds of birds sang in the branches, and the sunlight came down in
shafts from the lacework patches of sky far above, and lit up patches of
grass, and fallen leaves, and moss-covered tree trunks, on which sat a
crowd chiefly of Australians and New Zealanders. As one of the English
correspondents said, "It was just such a forest as Shakespeare wrote
about." Who would have thought that scene believable two years before?
A contest had been arranged between Australasians and Canadians in
France to decide which could fell trees in the quickest time. It began
really with the French forest authorities, who insisted on the
well-known forest rule that no young trees under one metre twenty in
girth must be felled after the middle of May, because if you cut the
young tree after the sap begins to rise it will not grow again. The
British officer in control of the forest had obtained an extension until
the end of May, but he had to get felled by then all the young timber
that he wanted before September. He had borrowed some Maoris to help,
and he noticed how they cut and the sort of sportsmen they were. He was
struck with an idea. A French forest officer was with him. "How long do
you think it would take a New Zealander to chop down a tree like that?"
asked the Frenchman. "A minute," was the answer. "Unbelievable,"
exclaimed the Frenchman. A Maori was called up, and the tree was down in
forty seconds.
After that a contest was arranged between Maoris and French
wood-cutters. Trees had to be cut in the French style, which, it must be
admitted, is much neater and more economical, and about five times as
laborious. The trees are cut off at ground level, and so straightly that
the stump would not trip you if it were in the middle of the road. Each
team consisted of six men, and felled twelve small trees, using its own
accustomed axes. The Maoris won by four minutes.
It was out of this that the big contest sprang. The Canadians and
Australasians challenged one another. This time the teams were to be of
three men. Each team was to cut three trees--only service axes to be
used; but otherwise each man could cut in any style he wished. The trees
averaged about two feet thick--hard wood. The teams started to practise.
And the forest officers' problem was solved.
The teams tossed for trees, and tossed for the order in which they were
to cut. I believe that when some question arose out of this toss, the
Maoris immediately offered to toss again, in order to have no advantage
from the result.
It was interesting to see the difference of style. All three types of
colonial woodsmen cut the tree almost breast high, but the Australian
seemed to be the only one that took advantage of that understroke, with
a hiss through the clenched teeth, which looks so formidable when you
watch our timber-getters. It was a Canadian team which started. They cut
coolly, and the one whom I watched struck one by his splendid condition.
A wiry man, not thick-set, but well built and athletic, who never turned
a hair. I think he was perhaps too cool to win. His comrades were not
quite so fast as he. They cut the tree with a fairly narrow scarf, the
top cut coming down at a steep angle, and the lower cut coming straight
in to meet it, so that the upper end of the stump, when the tree falls,
is left cut off as straight as a table top. Their first tree crashed in
fourteen minutes, the next in fifteen, and then they all three tackled
the last and toughest, which fell in twenty-one; fifty minutes
altogether when the three times were added.
The next team was Australian. From the first rapid swing one's anxiety
was whether they could possibly stand the pace. They tackled the job so
much more fiercely than the Canadians. I watched a young Tasmanian, his
whole soul in it, brow wrinkled, and sweat pouring from his face. You
would have thought that he was cutting almost wildly, till you noticed
how every cut went home exactly on top of the cut before. These
Australians--they were Western Australians mostly--made a wide scarf,
the top cut coming down at an angle, and the lower cut coming up at a
similar angle to meet it, making a wide open angle between the two. The
odds would, I think, have been taken by most of those who went there as
being in favour of the Canadians; and it was a great surprise when the
three Australian trees were all down in thirty-one minutes and eight
seconds.
The New Zealanders cut third. Their team consisted of Maoris. They did
not seem to be cutting with the fire of the Australians. There was not
the visible energy; their actions struck one as easier, and one doubted
if their great, lithe, brown muscles were carrying them so fast.
Yet the time told the truth. Their three trees were down in twenty-two
minutes and forty seconds, and no one else approached them. One Canadian
team improved the Canadian time to forty-five minutes twenty-two
seconds. The Maoris seemed mostly to cut with a narrower scarf even than
the Canadians, both upper and lower cuts sloping downward at a narrow
angle. In fairness it must be said that the Maoris had practised about
six weeks, the Canadians and Australians about one week.
An Australian won the log-chopping competition; and the Canadians won
with the crosscut saw. A New Zealander won the competition for style.
Later the men were mostly sitting watching the Frenchmen, workers in the
forest, giving an exhibition cut. Two of a Canadian team were sitting on
a log next to me, yarning in the slow, quizzical drawl of the Canadian
countryman, when some of their mates sat down beside them. The man next
me turned to them, and the next instant they were all talking French
among themselves, talking it as their native tongue. Their officer, a
handsome youngster, spoke it too. It was not till that moment that I
realised that most of these Canadian woodsmen here were French.
Meanwhile the exhibition chop went on. The French woodsmen were digging
at the roots of their trees with long, ancient axes, more like a cold
chisel than a modern axe. "I think I could do as well with a knife and
fork," said one great kindly Australian as he watched with a smile.
But, to my mind, that exhibition was the most impressive of all. For
every one of those who took part in it was either an old man or a slip
of a slender boy.