“This or that quiet place, the home of peace, was turned into a ghastly battle-field, with the naked and maimed corpses of trees lying about. Bad enough, all this was. Still, trees might grow again; the hollows might recover their woodland privacy and peace for other generations to enjoy. But what would never be recovered, because in fact War had found it already all but dead, was the earlier English understanding of timber, the local knowledge of it, the patriarchal traditions of handling it.”
— The Wheelwright’s Shop by George Sturt (Cambridge, 1948)
(Image from “Four and Twenty Toilers” [1900] by Francis Donkin Bedford [1864-1954]. Image from Jeff Burks. Download the full book here.)