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Show Man Is Riding Life Cycle Toward His Destruction By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. WASHINGTON. Today we have two visitors whom I met recently at the Smithsonian institution, Mrs. Neanderthaler (her husband wasn't available) and Mr. Cro-Magnon. They have come a long way. The Neanderthalers lived about 25,000 years ago but what's a few thousand years among friends or relatives? I doubt that the Neanderthalers are relatives of ours and I'm not sorry. They lived early in the Old StoneS age, and died without leaving any known heirs, assigns or deseendents which may be Just as well for the rest of us who might have Inherited some of their characteristics. They were sub-humans stocky folks but they couldn't take It. They died out. Now Mr. Cro-Magnon was a different dif-ferent proposition. He was a su- r r ' " v ' . , - w l i I . 1 1 ,;&-. ' - '-if nil .hSiiJ perlor human and I wish he were a relative because he was really superior to us better body, better brain. If he'd only lasted, what a career he would have had in Hollywood and what he might have done for us! He might have saved us. He may still. age depth of the topsoil on the earth is about one foot. It is estimated that it takes nature, under favorable conditions, con-ditions, from 300 to 1,000 years to build one inch of that vital source of our food, clothing and shelter. "Yet," he says, "what may have taken a thousand years to build can be, and in some places has been, removed by erosion in a year, or even In a single day." Erosion. That comes from overuse, over-use, wrong use or removal of protecting pro-tecting grasses and trees. We overgrazed over-grazed the plains to get quick money for beef, mutton and wool. We plowed fields of grass, left them exposed, ex-posed, and you remember what happenedthe hap-penedthe dust bowl. We slaughtered slaugh-tered the forests and reaped the yearly devastating floods. Today our food and shelter runs down the muddied mud-died rivers to be lost in the ocean. And animal life? We killed off millions of wild animals on this continent. We replaced them, to some extent, by domestic domes-tic animals. But we are breaking break-ing the magic cycle of life there, too, for the life-giving properties proper-ties of most of our domestio animals do not return to the soil as did the bones and bodies of wild life that lived their course, died and were enveloped in their mother earth. Sheep and cattle are shipped today to slaughter houses where what lit- Baukhage rve been read- ing two new books "Our Plundered Planet," by Fairfield Osborne and "Road to Survival," by William Vogt. Our friend Neanderthaler probably proba-bly managed to stick around 200,000 years or so before his environment or his neighbors finished him off. Today we are rapidly changing chang-ing our environment, and unless un-less we cease destroying our sources of food and shelter, we shall soon destroy ourselves, as our sub-human friend was destroyed. de-stroyed. We know that there are two things which chiefly distinguish man from the animal: The way he has developed de-veloped the use of his hands and the way his brain works. But our hands, at the levers of machines, conceived by our brains, have so disturbed the cycle of nature, have done such terrible things to all forms of life, that they may prove our undoing If they don't blow us into atomic eternity, first) Forgetting atomic destruction, let's look at some others. , We are very good at repro ducing. Ii three centuries the population of the earth has increased in-creased almost five times. In the seventeenth century there were 400 million people. There are 2,000 million today. Five times as many mouths to feed. Osborne says: "If one takes four billion acres, representing an area of land estimated as now available ioi cultivation, it means that there are less than two acres per capita Contrasted with this is a generally accepted computation that two and one-half acres of land of average productivity are required to provide even a minimum adequate diet for each person." Think of that: It takes two and one-half acres to feed you properly. There are now only two acres avail- ; V- n x . p tVl'Y" v 'Y MR. CRO-MAGNON . . . spark of something else . . . tie is left disappears in disposal plants or goes back to the ocean. We are killing the soil. Gradually removing it and the tiny animal and plant cells it contains, and thus destroying de-stroying the potential for reprodu-ing reprodu-ing the tiny living organisms in the top soil which are a part of the relationship re-lationship of all living things. I haven't space to go on, but 1 don't want to leave on a too-depressing note. It's true that our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Neanderthaler, Neanderthal-er, the sub-human folk with the little lit-tle brain, couldn't take it. But we can hope that his successor, Mr. Cro-Magnon, who had a better brain than we have, passed some of it on to us, with the spark of something else that made him lift his chin a little from the clod. "We have been taught to lift ours higher, to the heavens. There's hope up there and inspiration and within with-in ourselves the power, too, if we know how to use it. More Trees On the Way American farmers will have more trees to plant next year than ever before in our history. State nurseries plan to grow 368,-976.551 368,-976.551 in 1947-48, according to a national survey just completed by the American Forest Products Industries, In-dustries, Inc., of Washington, D. C. Most of these trees will be sold to farmers and other landowners at cost, while many will be given to farmers free of charge by forest industries who purchase them from state nurseries. This forest seedling production, however, will be increased substantially substan-tially by federal and private industry indus-try nurseries over the United States, pushing the total to approximately 400 million seedlings. Yet these figures, representing thi planting of three trees for even man, woman and child in the cotin try, indicate statistically that seed ling production still Is not enoug' to fill the demand by woodland owr ers and other citizens interested h growing trees. And while they still do not me. the tremendous demand, if all thf.-seedlings thf.-seedlings were planted 1.000 to acre they would form a verri;. mile-wide belt stretching from Nv York to Chicago. The record in tree planting matched only by the volume of n. wood now growing on Amerii;i forest lands. Total growth now e ceeds 13.3 billion cubic feet of wm every year greatest volume ev recorded in surveys made by tl federal government. MRS. NEANDERTHALER . . . they couldn't take it . . . eble. So you can see why there are such food shortages around the world. Osborne goes on: "The relation between land-health and health of human beings is actually no more than a delicate aspect of the delicate complex aspect of all life." The cycle of life the life to the soil that feeds and clothes our own life is a part of the single whole which contributes to the fruitfulness of the earth. 1 haven't space here to go through the whole list of crimes that man has committed in the race to break that cycle to destroy the fruitfulness fruitful-ness of the earth that fruitfulness upon whicl. his own existence de-- de-- pends. Take the most striking example ex-ample the topsoil. Topsoil. When that goes, we go with it. Osborne, as I mentioned In this pace last week, estimates the aver- |