The Young Wireless Operator--As a Fire Patrol
or
The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol
Lewis E. Theiss
Illustrated by
Frank T. Merrill
The Young Wireless Operator--As A Fire Patrol.
This book is dedicated to
Gifford Pinchot
sometime forester for the United States of America, and now Commissionerof Forestry for Pennsylvania, whose ceaseless and undiscouraged efforts tosave from spoliation the vast timber stands and other natural resources ofAmerica have inspired this story
Foreword
Boys and dogs go well together. So do boys and trees. When a boy gets tolove the forest and can live in it, that is best of all. For the forestmakes real boys and real men.
Not only does the forest do that, but it keeps the Nation alive. No onecan eat a meal without the help of the forest, for it takes more than halfthe wood cut every year in the United States to enable the farmer to growthe food and the fibres to feed and clothe the Nation. No one can live ina house without the help of the forest, for whether we speak of it as awooden house, a brick house, a stone house, or a concrete house, stillthere is wood in it, and without wood it could not have been built.
We are apt to think of the city dwellers as people who are not dependenton the forest. As a matter of fact, they are the most dependent of all,for the cities would be deserted, the houses empty, and the streets dead,except for the things which could not be grown nor mined nor manufacturednor transported without the help of wood from the forest.
Pennsylvania--Penn's Woods--is the greatest industrial commonwealth in theworld. Without its woods, it could never have been made so. Unless itswoods are restored, it cannot continue to be so, and unless forest firesare stopped, there is no way to restore Penn's Woods.
I have read "The Young Wireless Operator--As a Fire Patrol" with thekeenest interest, not only because it is about the forest, but because itis a thrillingly interesting story of a real boy and the real things hedid in the woods. I like it from end to end, and that is why, when Mr.Theiss asked me to write this foreword, I gladly consented.
No one loves the woods more than I, as boy and man, or loves to be in thembetter. One of the things I want most is to see more and better forests inour great State of Pennsylvania, and in the whole United States. Withoutour forests we could not have become great, nor can we continue to be so.For the men and boys who love the forest and understand it are of the kindwithout whom great nations are impossible.
Gifford Pinchot.