Forest Fires
Nobody, nowadays, seems to love the Forestry Commission, but it is surprising, sometimes, that the Commission is as patient with the public as it is. Forest fires, it reports, are already occurring at the rate of twenty per week. A dry February and a drier March are responsible for the inflammable state of heath and undergrowth, and as March goes on things are likely to be still more dangerous. These fires are caused almost entirely by irresponsible people, who either light picnic fires or behave on bracken-strewn land exactly as they behave, with cigarettes, on other people's carpets. The man who cannot light (and put out) a picnic fire without setting fire to a whole parish ought, I feel, never to trust himself with a match at all. Ironical to think that, of the few thousand acres of State-owned land that we still possess in this country, hundred; should be devastated every summer by the people to whom it virtually belongs. I hope the Forestry Commissioners' warning needs no underlining here.
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