Hors-d'Œuvre

THE TREE

"The Tree", the official bulletin of the "Friends of Trees", asks 60 writers the following question: "Which tree do you prefer, and what are the reasons for your preference?"

I am very happy that trees have friends. The tree, placed between beings and things, is amiable in art as in nature. It is alive and, consequently, more moving than the monuments built by men, made of an insensible material, geometric in their appearance and devoid of soul despite their pride or their pretension to duration (only ruins are touching, because ivy and moss cover them with a fragile mantle).
The tree, often benevolent, has never harmed anyone. It does not have in its character that human side which is hateful in animals.

Even if it does not bear fruit, it offers us shade, shelter, and peace; it gives us the bed where we are born, where we love, where we die; it gives us the coffin where we find rest... The first tree gave the first human couple the secret of life and the opportunity for emancipation... And consider that a tree with limbs pierced with nails was one day crucified on Golgotha.

The Bulletin des Amis des Arbres bears this epigraph: "To love trees is to love one's homeland", which at first seems absurd, because there are trees everywhere, and the lover who has a preference for the baobab or the coconut tree would thus be a traitor marked for exile. But the answers given by writers to a question that seems to be a subject for a composition for the certificate of studies justifies this paradoxical assertion.

The writers of Auvergne and Limousin choose the chestnut tree. The Landes and the Southerners prefer the fir tree; the Normans, the apple tree, and the Lyonnais, the poplar. Each one loves the tree of his province. However, Mr. Francis Carco shows a certain originality; he votes for the pine, because there is a superb pine in front of Mr. Paul Bourget's house. We can see from this that Francis Carco's promised land is at the end of the Pont des Arts, where old venerable trunks are adorned with evergreen foliage. If Alfred de Musset still had a vote for the academic prizes, Francis Carco would have felt the liveliest predilection for the weeping willow... However, trees provide shade at the same time as they offer shelter, and I would be inclined to believe that the tree placed in front of Mr. Paul Bourget's home is a type of manchineel.

Fortunately, several friends of trees (including Colette and Haraucourt) were able to answer that they preferred all trees. And you have to love them all.

In spring, you have to love the green sweetness of the early chestnut tree and the virginal splendor of the cherry trees in bloom. And then the acacia which, in May, covers the road with a perfumed snow. In summer, you have to love the thick oaks in the forest and the peaceful lime trees in front of the old church. In autumn, you have to love the purple beeches and the golden chestnut trees, under whose vault reigns, in the evening, an august silence of a cathedral while the heady smell of dead leaves rises from the ground. In winter, you have to love the melancholy of the monotonous pines and the fine and fragile grace of the bare poplars. And then... and then I am wrong. You must not make literature out of trees. This is precisely what I reproach the "Bulletin des Amis des Arbres" for, which, moreover, is busy distributing medals, diplomas and propaganda leaflets.

The Bulletin of the Friends of Trees should be an organ of combat against the age-old enemy: the lumberjack. I traveled a lot this summer. I saw on the roads very few road workers, but a frightening number of lumberjacks and mechanical sawmills. The nonchalant road workers, with their little wheelbarrows and their big shovels, pretended to patch up an irreparable roadway; but the lumberjacks, with a frightful enthusiasm and a diabolical activity, pushed aside the biggest trees, the oldest, the most beautiful, trees which, in a civilized country, should be intangible and sacred.

Is there anything to be done against felling and subdivision? Can we tax or fine someone who cuts down an old tree? Can we give money to buy back the lives of oaks as we used to give money to buy back the lives of little Chinese people?

If nothing can be done, the Society of Friends of Trees will have no choice but to adjourn its last session as a sign of mourning, giving way to Mr. J.-A. Francon.
For I have not yet told you that following the survey provided by the writers, the Bulletin of Friends of Trees is publishing an announcement worded as follows:

J.-A. FRANCON
TARIFF FOR CUBING OF SQUARED AND ROUND WOOD
valued in cubic meters and decimal fractions of the cubic meter

Let's be practical: the preferred tree is the one that appears as a beautiful pile of planks

G. De La Fouchardière