Men Of The Last Frontier, by Grey Owl
Grey Owl is speaking of the forest fires that raged through Canada in the early 1900s following irresponsible logging and decimation of local beaver populations, and his words still ring with truth 100 years later, and far beyond the once-wild North. No mortal punishment is severe enough to atone for the deliberate destruction of our forests.
"And until the politics in which the issue is obscured are kept out of the matter and replaced by public-spirited altruism and a genuine forest conservation policy, the will of the people will be over-ridden, and the forest will con[174]tinue to fall before the hosts of the God of Mammon, until the last tree is laid in the dust.
No punishment can be severe enough to atone for the deliberate or careless setting of fire, and how little this is realized even to-day is illustrated by the decision, handed down, of a magistrate in a middle-sized town, when a man charged with having a bottle of whiskey in his possession during a prohibition wave was fined two hundred dollars, and another guilty of setting fire, and destroying several thousand dollars' worth of timber, paid only ten dollars and costs."