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after the war. So the contrast between my home landscape and that around Saumur increased my respect for the French. They had no broomsage fields.

In 1917 we Americans still had both land and wood to spare. The French, having occupied their country for a longer period, had no remaining surplus of either. When Herbert Jones and I began to take those Sunday walks we made some interesting discoveries abou French forests. The trees grew in a row, evenly spaced like stalks of corn in a field. The trees in a given row were of uniform size, presumably of the same age. The larger the trees the farther apart they were spaced. The forest grew in sections, separated by fire lanes where only grass grew. Obviously those trees had been planted by hand, and had been thinned out as they grew larger. It was all part of the French pattern of conservation, of bearing in mind the welfare of generations to come.

In that war France suffered a fuel shortage; in modern language an energy crisis. Today our main source of energy is oil, but that was not the case in 1917. Oil was needed only for running ships' en engines and to make gasoline to run the small amount of automotive traffic that it then had. Having no oil wells, France had to import all its oul. The main source of energy for running railroads and industries, was coal. The French coal mines were either in German hands or in territory being fought over. So France had to import all its coal from its ally, England. The only native fuel the French had was wood. The French used it sparingly. Probably no civilized nation in modern times has managed with so little winter heat as the French did in 1917-18.

Our dormitory building at Saumur had no central heating. Each bedroom had a fireplace, but no fuel was provided. The fuel shortage was something entirely outside American experience. I did not understand it, and I think my classmates were equally ignorant. So, as cold weather came on, we thought the French were just being stingy about giving us heat. We asked Théry, our orderly if he could buy some fuel for us. Coal and regular firewood were rigidly controlled and not for sale on the open market. The only kind of fuel on open sale consisted of fagots, bundles of small sticks gleaned from fallen