Foreword
Water is the commonest substance on the face of the Earth, yet we
really know very little about this essential source of life. We do know
that without it there would be no life — indeed there would be lit-
tle in the way of chemical reaction, for water is the universal cata-
lyst. Water is also our potential nemesis, for today it is widely agreed
that if there is another world war, it will be waged over this precious
resource. Water in a state fit enough for human consumption or for
succouring the life cycle of the brown trout is now in short supply
and its availability is diminishing every day.
Before Austria had stripped her mountains of all her old growth
forests, Viktor Schauberger, a forester, observing how a trout could
maintain its station in the midst of a turbulent stream, discovered
the secret of living water. Distilled from the sea and leaving most of
its burden of salt behind, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,
taking up kinetic energy as it makes its way back to ordnance
datum (standard sea level), itself controlled by the balance of the
global greenhouse.
En route this living water absorbs minerals from both soil and
bedrock sufficient to nurture the pulse of life itself, tiny herbs, some
full of the power of healing, and the natural vegetation that gener-
ates organic soil. The trees, reaching up to the Sun, power houses for
transforming energy, are driven by living water, ameliorating the
climate near the ground, controlling erosion and helping to main-
tain the life-giving water cycle.
If this cycle gets out of balance in any way, the consequences are
dire, as insurance companies are now discovering. Drought, floods,
winds and wild fire out of control, and perhaps worst of all, eutroph-
ication, the clever name for too many nutrients choking the very
arteries through which living water used to meander its self-cleans-
ing way down to the sea.
There is much in Schauberger's philosophy that gets up the
noses of the science that sees only financial profit at the end of their
glass telescope of knowledge. Alick Bartholomew is to be congratu-
lated for bringing Schauberger's vision into focus in this book at the
most opportune time. Wave power is beginning to come on stream
FOREWORD