a house without the help of the forest, for whether we speak of it as a
wooden house, a brick house, a stone house, or a concrete house, still
there 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 dependent
on 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 manufactured
nor transported without the help of wood from the forest.

Pennsylvania--Penn's Woods--is the greatest industrial commonwealth in the
world. Without its woods, it could never have been made so. Unless its
woods are restored, it cannot continue to be so, and unless forest fires
are stopped, there is no way to restore Penn's Woods.

I have read "The Young Wireless Operator--As a Fire Patrol" with the
keenest interest, not only because it is about the forest, but because it
is a thrillingly interesting story of a real boy and the real things he
did 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 them
better. One of the things I want most is to see more and better forests in
our great State of Pennsylvania, and in the whole United States. Without
our 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 kind
without whom great nations are impossible.

Gifford Pinchot.