FOREST FIRES

Every year, at this time, the most beautiful forests in France are ravaged by fire. From all sides, in fact, dispatches report that fires, caused by heat and drought, have destroyed woods, forests and scrubland, transforming pleasant landscapes into desert moors where all cultivation is prohibited for a long time. How many ruins thus consumed, not to mention an aesthetic almost irremediably lost!

It is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to prevent the scourge. But is there any way to fight it quickly and limit its ravages as much as possible? From this point of view, a happy initiative has just been taken by the Varoise union of the civic league. Moved by the periodic fires which ravage the South-East region, and which are, each year, at the time of the heat wave, an ever resurgent danger, it has just launched an appeal with a view to recruiting a corps of volunteers who, at the slightest alert, must be at the scene of the disaster to fight the red wave. We hope that similar initiatives will be taken in all the regions where we have the good fortune to own forests.

And, in the same vein, we also hope, because not all forest fires are due to unavoidable causes, that extremely severe and energetic measures will be taken, in the future, against certain smokers who are really too reckless. It is a matter of national interest.