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Title: Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace
Author: Maxwell, George Hebard, 1860-1946
Language: English
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OUR NATIONAL DEFENSE
THE PATRIOTISM OF PEACE
BY
GEORGE H. MAXWELL
THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE HOMECROFTERS
RURAL SETTLEMENTS ASSOCIATION
WASHINGTON
MARYLAND BUILDING
NEW ORLEANS
COTTON EXCHANGE BUILDING
1915
_Copyright, 1916_,
BY RURAL SETTLEMENTS ASSOCIATION.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
TO
ALL HOMECROFTERS
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
"_Peace hath her victories
No less renowned than war_"
PREFATORY NOTE
_Ammunition_ is necessary to win a battle. Where it is a great _Battle for
Peace_, to be fought with pen and voice, the ammunition needed is _facts_.
Whenever the people of the United States know the _facts_ relating to the
subject to which this book is devoted, _then what it advocates will be
done_. Much fault has been found with Congress because of the country's
unpreparedness. Congress is not at fault. "The stream cannot rise higher
than the fountain." The will of the people is the law. The people of this
nation are unalterably opposed to a big Standing Army. When they know that
the safety of the nation can be assured without either the cost or the
menace of militarism, the people will demand that it be done, and Congress
will register that popular decree, gladly and willingly. It is not at all
surprising that Congress does not yield to the clamor of the militarists
when they know the adverse sentiment of the people on that subject.
President Schurman of Cornell recently said:
"It would be self-deception of the grossest character if Americans made
their love of peace the criterion of the military policy and preparedness
of their country. It would be madness to enfeeble and imperil the United
States because we believe peace the chief blessing of the nations."
All that is true. But when the problem is analyzed _there is no other way
that can be devised_, except that proposed in this book, that will
safeguard the nation against foreign attack or invasion, and do it
_adequately_, without incurring stupendous cost or creating a menace to
liberty. Americans are a brave people, but they have a hereditary aversion
to the clank of a saber in time of peace.
There are a few books that every one who wishes to master the subject
should read. First among these is "Fields, Factories and Workshops," by
Prince Kropotkin, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. A new edition
of this book has been recently issued which costs only seventy-five cents.
"The Iron in the Blood" is a chapter in "The Coming People," by Charles F.
Dole, published by T. Y. Crowell & Co. of New York. A reprint of this book
can be had for twenty-five cents from the Rural Settlements Association.
"The Secret of Nippon's Power" is another pertinent article, in "The First
Book of the Homecrofters." A new and enlarged edition of this book will
soon be issued. In the meantime copies of the first edition can be had for
twenty-five cents from the Rural Settlements Association.
More has been accomplished in Duluth, Minnesota, to prove the benefits of
the Homecroft Life than in any other City in the United States. A special
publication, descriptive of the Homecroft Work in Duluth, and a pamphlet by
George H. Maxwell entitled, "The Cost of Living," which shows the relation
to that subject of the Homecroft System of Education and Life, can be
obtained by sending ten cents in stamps to the Rural Settlements
Association, Cotton Exchange Building, New Orleans, La.
The legislative machinery necessary to inaugurate the plans for work to be
done through the Forest Service and the Reclamation Service is all provided
for in the Newlands-Broussard River Regulation Bill. That bill provides for
river regulation, flood prevention, land reclamation and settlement, and
the establishment of forest plantations in all parts of the United States.
It also brings the departments of the national government into coördinating
by forming the Board of River Regulation. Through that board, all necessary
plans would be worked out for coördinating other departments with the War
Department, and completing the organization of the National Construction
Reserve and the Homecroft Reserve. When perfected, those plans would be
presented to Congress with a recommendation for their enactment.
Those who favor the plan advocated in this book are urged to concentrate
their influence first on the passage of that bill as the entering-wedge to
the ultimate adoption of the entire plan. They are also urged to do all in
their power to enlist the active interest of their friends by inducing them
to study the subject and _get the facts_.
Copies of the Newlands-Broussard River Regulation Bill and explanatory
printed matter may be had without charge by writing to the National
Reclamation Association, 331 Maryland Building, Washington, D. C.
This book, OUR NATIONAL, DEFENSE--THE PATRIOTISM OF PEACE, has been
published by the Rural Settlements Association. The price of the book is
$1.25, including postage, and orders for copies, with remittance for that
amount, should be sent to Rural Settlements Association, Cotton Exchange
Building, New Orleans, La.
GEORGE H. MAXWELL, _Executive Director_,
Rural Settlements Association,
National Reclamation Association.
FOREWORD
_Would it interest you to know_ that the people of the United States,
having first blindfolded themselves with the self-complacence of ignorance,
are walking along the crest of a ridge with a precipice on one side falling
sheer into the abyss of devastation by war with an invading foreign power,
while on the other side boils the seething crater of a social volcano?
If so, _you will be convinced of that fact_, if you will carefully and
thoughtfully read this book through from cover to cover; and _you will also
be convinced_ that the only road to safety is that pointed out in this
book.
Would you not feel that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"
when reflecting on the ease with which any of the Great European Powers
could _again_ occupy and burn Washington, as it was burned in 1814, and
capture and levy an enormous indemnity upon New York?
Would you contemplate with indifference and equanimity _the annexation of
the Pacific Coast of the United States to Japan_?
Has it occurred to you that, unless we wake up, mend our ways and change
our national policy, war is ultimately as inevitable between the United
States and Japan as it has been for years between France and Germany?
_Would it interest you to know_ that in the event of such a war the
Japanese would be found fully prepared, while we are utterly unprepared;
and that Japan would, within ten days, mobilize an army in California large
enough to insure to them its military control; and that within four weeks
thereafter they would land an army of 200,000 veteran soldiers on the
Pacific coast?
_Would it interest you to know_ that in such an emergency our navy would be
impotent to check this occupation and invasion, and that our so-called but
now confessedly misnamed coast defenses would be about as much protection
as a large load of alfalfa hay; and that as part of this military occupancy
by Japan of the territory lying between the Cascade and Sierra Nevada
mountains and the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese would dynamite every tunnel,
destroy the Colorado River railroad bridges, and fortify the mountain
passes; and that the recapture of one pass by the United States would be a
more difficult military undertaking for us than was the capture of Port
Arthur or Tsing-Tao by the Japanese?
_Would it interest you to know_ that the very real danger that California,
Western Oregon, and Western Washington may be annexed to Japan and a
thousand miles of deserts and inaccessible mountain ranges, instead of the
Pacific Ocean, separate Japan from the United States, is a danger that
exists because not one in ten thousand of the people of the United States
will give the slightest heed to this question, which overshadows in
importance every other question affecting the people of the United States?
_Would it interest you to know_ that there is just as much, and more,
danger that the desolating flames of war may sweep over and devastate
Southern California as there was that they might sweep over and devastate
Belgium? You doubtless will say, "That is impossible!" You would have said
the same thing a year ago about Belgium, with much more of assurance and
positive conviction.
_Would it interest you to know_ that the doing of the things that would
insure peace forever between the United States and Japan, as well as all
European nations, would at the same time end all danger from the ravages of
destructive floods, stop forest fires, perpetuate our forest resources,
preserve the forest and woodland cover on our watersheds, create a great
national system of inland waterways, reclaim every reclaimable acre of arid
or swamp and overflow land in the United States, and reduce the cost of
living by doubling the agricultural production of this country within ten
years?
_Would it interest you to know_ that the doing of the same things would end
child labor, end woman labor in factories, end unemployment, end the whole
multitude of evil and vicious influences that are degenerating humanity and
deteriorating the race in the congested cities of this country, and
safeguard the United States against the internal as well as the external
dangers that now menace its future welfare?
_Would it interest you to know_ that the doing of those same things would
inaugurate an era of business prosperity, based on human welfare and
advancement, instead of on human exploitation, and would insure the
perpetuity of that prosperity?
_Would it interest you to know_ that the things which it is proposed shall
be done by the United States have already been done, practically and
successfully, by Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand; and that they can
and will be done in this country whenever the people wake up and decide to
do something for themselves instead of waiting for somebody else to do it
for them.
If you doubt any of the foregoing statements, _read the book_; and you will
be convinced of their _absolute truth_ and you will be appalled at the
magnitude of the preventable calamity that menaces the people of the United
States solely because of their heedlessness, indifference, and refusal to
face facts.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I Page
SHALL THERE BE AN END OF WAR? 1
Question may be answered in the affirmative by the
United States?--Facts must be made known to the
people--Nationwide educational campaign is
necessary--Every individual must be aroused to
action--Appalling consequences of triumph of
militarism--United States must lead the world in its
overthrow--Cannot be dependent for peace on coöperation
of other nations--Appalling losses may result from
public apathy and indifference--Necessity for national
policy for flood prevention--Naval is out of
balance--Other things more needed than
battleships--Nationalisation of manufacture of
armaments and battleships--There must be an end of
private profit from such manufacture--It inspires
militarism and stimulates war.
CHAPTER II
INADEQUACY OF MILITARIST PLANS FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE 24
Militarists believe war inevitable--Urge United States
is unprepared--Peace Advocates leave to Militarists all
plans for National Defense--Militarists have no
adequate plan--Enormous cost of large standing
army--Menace of a military despotism--No reliance can
be placed on State Militia--Impracticability of a
Reserve composed of men who have served in the Regular
Army--War must be recognised as a
possibility--Hypocrisy of opposition to war by those
who profit from so-called civilized warfare--Peace
Propaganda must be harmonized with national
defense--All plans far world Peace have thus far proved
futile--United States spends enormous sums on Army
without any guarantee of national defense--The
Frankenstein of War can be controlled.
CHAPTER III
IMPREGNABLE DEFENSE AGAINST FOREIGN INVASION 44
Plans for national defense must primarily operate to
prevent war--Reasons why War Department will never
devise satisfactory system--Militarists have no
sympathy with peace movement--It aims to render
military profession obsolete--Standing Army is economic
waste of money and men--It should be a great
educational institution--Chairman Hay of Committee on
Military Affairs, House of Representatives, shows
enormous cost of Standing Army and impracticability of
Reserve as proposed by Army Officers--Comparison of
Military Expenditures and Results in United States and
Japan--Increase of Standing Army to 200,000 would be
futile and unwarranted--European War will not bring
disarmament--Warning of Field Marshal Earl
Roberts--Standing Army promotes military spirit which
increases danger of war.
CHAPTER IV
NATIONAL CONSTRUCTION RESERVE 74
Enlistment of Construction Corps in government Services
in time of peace--Transformation of same organization
into military force in time of war--National forces
must be organized for conflict to save, not destroy,
life and property--Forest Service and Reclamation
Service work should be done by Reservists enlisted in
Construction Corps--Same system should be adopted in
all government services--Construction Reserve to be so
trained as to instantly become army of trained soldiers
whenever needed--More than work enough in time of peace
for a million Reservists--planting forests--fighting
forest fires--preventing floods--irrigating
deserts--draining swamps--building highways, waterways,
and railways--Importance of safeguarding nation against
destruction by Nature's invading forces.
CHAPTER V
ADAPTABILITY OF SYSTEM FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE 115
Swiss Military System ideal for Switzerland--Not
adapted to United States as a whole--Reserve of wage
earners impracticable--Their mobilization would cripple
industry and cause privation for families--City clerks
and factory workers lack physical stamina--A citizen
soldiery needed of hardy men like founders of this
nation--Anglo-Saxon stock is deteriorating in
cities--Only remedy is Homecrofts for workingmen and
their families--Otherwise Industry will destroy
Humanity--Greatest danger to the City of New York is
from within--Racial degeneracy is most serious
menace--Patrician class warned against Roman System
which resulted in Proscription and Confiscation--The
spirit of Switzerland should sway the world--Inadequate
Standing Army a serious danger--Invites attack against
which it cannot defend--United States Standing Army
gives no assurance of national safety.
CHAPTER VI
MENACE OF ASIATIC COMPETITION AND INVASION 135
Japanese influx into Hawaii and Pacific Coast
States--Unexpected incident like blowing up of Maine
might precipitate conflict--In that event peace
advocates and governments might be powerless to prevent
war--Japanese merit the good will of other
nations--Reasons why they come to Pacific Coast--Japan
is overpopulated--30,000,000 rural people on 12,500,000
acres--Population increasing 1,000,000 annually--More
Japanese in California of military age than entire Army
of United States--Japanese in South America and
Mexico--United States must meet economic competition of
Japan--Pacific Coast must be settled with Caucasian
population that will cultivate the soil as Japanese
would cultivate it if it were their country--Otherwise
armed conflict with Japan inevitable.
CHAPTER VII
JAPAN AND THE COLORADO RIVER VALLEY 176
Another Japanese Empire could be created in the
Drainage Basin of the Colorado River--What Japanese
would do with that country if it were Japanese
Territory--We waste annually water containing
357,490,000 tons of fertilizing material--5,000,000
acres can be reclaimed between Needles and
Mexico--Every acre would support a family--Climate
makes gardening equivalent to hot house culture out of
doors--Inexhaustible supplies of nitrogen, phosphates,
and potash for fertilizer--Enormous possibilities of
electric power development--Japan would fight the
Desert and Conquest it with same thoroughness that she
fought Russia--Would develop vast Commerce from
Colorado River and Gulf of California--Japanese
Colonization in Mexico--Spirit of Speculation retards
development by United States--What should be done with
the Colorado River Valley--United States must reclaim
and colonize that country the same as Japanese would do
if it belonged to them.
CHAPTER VIII
STRENGTH OF A HOMECROFT RESERVE 213
A Homecroft Reserve in Scotland of one million Soldiers
would have prevented this last great war--Scotch
Homecrofters make such Soldiers as the Gordon
Highlanders and the Black Watch--Story of the Gordon
Highlanders--The Scots were the original
Homecrofters--The description in "Raiderland" of the
Homecrofts in Galloway--Grasping greed of intrenched
interests drove the Homecrofters from Scotland--Same
interests now blocking development in United
States--Homecroft System of Education and Life would
breed a race of stalwart soldiers in United
States--Could leave home for actual service without
disturbing industrial conditions--Homecrofters would be
concentrated for training and organization--Would
eliminate all danger of militarism or military
despotism--Comparison in value of 1,000,000 trained
Homecrofters with 1,000,000 immigrants--Homecroft
Reserve System will end child labor and woman labor in
factories and will also end unemployment.
Chapter IX
HOMECROFT RESERVE IN COLORADO RIVER VALLEY 247
United States owns land, water and power--Development
by national government would result in vast profit to
it--Australian System of Land Reclamation and
Settlement should be adopted--Action should be prompt
to forestall friction between United States and
Japan--Will never have war with Japan except as result
of apathy and neglect--United State must create in
Colorado River Valley dense population settled in
self-containing Communities--Characteristics of Country
particularly adapt it to requirements for Homecroft
Reserve--Safety of Southern California from invasion
would be insured--Military Highways to San Diego and
Los Angeles--Defense of Mexican Border--Homecroft
Cavalry Reserve in Nevada similar to Cossack Cavalry
System--Correction of Mexican Boundary Line to include
mouth of Colorado River in the United States--New State
of South California to be formed.
CHAPTER X
CALIFORNIA A REMOTE INSULAR PROVINCE 277
More easily accessible from Japan by sea than from
United States by land, in case of war--Mountain Ranges
bound it north, east, and south--All plans for defense
of California with a Navy or coast fortifications are
futile and a delusion--Bombardment of English towns and
comparison of English Coast and California
Coast--Japan would, if war were declared, seize Alaska,
Philippines, and Hawaii--Would then transport an army
of 200,000 to California--Railroad tunnels and bridges
being destroyed by dynamite would render relief by
United States impossible--Reliance on Panama Canal too
uncertain--Quickness with which occupation of
California would be accomplished by Japanese--Huge
military difficulties in the way of United States
reconquering it--Mountain passes would be fortified by
Japanese--Railroad bridges, culverts, and tunnels
across deserts would be dynamited--To recapture a
single mountain pass more difficult than capture of
Port Arthur--Death and Desolation are Supreme in the
Southwestern Deserts--Japanese would rapidly colonize
all vacant lands in California--The way to make the
Pacific Coast safe is for the United States to colonize
it first with a dense population of intensive
cultivators of the soil.
CHAPTER XI
MILITARISM AND THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 301
Military caste absorbs to itself undue power--Danger
seen in military opposition to improved system for
river regulation--Military control of inland waterways
detrimental to country--Army Engineers wedded to System
of "Pork Barrel," political, piecemeal
appropriations--Reason why Army methods of education
hamper progress in river improvement--Mississippi River
requires comprehensive treatment--Necessity for Source
Stream Control on all upper tributaries--Why the
Calaveras Reservoir was not built--Blunder in
Construction of Stockton Cutoff Canal--War may be
uncertain, but necessity for fight against floods and
storms is certain--Description of a great Gulf
Storm--Comprehensive plan for protecting lower delta of
Mississippi River by great Dikes like those in Holland
Safety from floods guaranteed by construction of
Atchafalaya Controlled Outlet, Wasteway, and Auxiliary
flood water channels.
CHAPTER XII
BENEFITS FROM THE NATIONAL HOMECROFT RESERVE SYSTEM 335
What this generation would bequeath to future
generations--United States safeguarded against internal
dangers and made impregnable against attack or
invasion--No other plan will accomplish that
result--Summary of reasons why Homecroft Reserve System
will accomplish it--Comparison of cost of larger
Standing Army and same number of Homecroft
Reserve--Epitome of advantages of a Homecroft Reserve
from the standpoint of Peace--Homecroft Reserve System
must be evolved gradually--Rapid development would
follow when system once well established--This is
illustrated by growth of Rural Mail service, Electric
lighting, aërial navigation, and telephone--Where the
first 100,000 Homecroft Reservists should be
located--50,000 Reservists in California, 50,000 in
Louisiana, 80,000 in West Virginia, and 10,000 in
Minnesota--Specification of apportionment to projects
of the $100,000,000 that would be saved from military
expenditures for increased Standing Army--Homecroft
financial System proposed--Homecroft Certificates to be
issued--Advantages of the Homecroft Reserve System to
the Homecrofter--Economic power created for the Nation
would result in Universal Peace.
OUR NATIONAL DEFENSE
THE PATRIOTISM OF PEACE
CHAPTER I
_Shall there be an end of war, and of all danger or possibility of war in
the future, not only in this, but in all other countries, and shall we have
universal peace on earth through all the coming centuries?_
That is the most momentous question that has ever confronted any nation in
the history of the world. The United States of America stands face to face
with it to-day, and can answer the question in the affirmative, if the
people of this country so determine.
On their decision depends, not only the safety and perpetuity of this
nation, and the welfare of our own people, but the welfare of all the other
nations and peoples of the earth as well, through all future time.
_The question will have been answered in the affirmative whenever the plan
proposed in this book shall have been adopted by the people of the United
States._
Its adoption will strengthen every plan that can be devised to prevent war.
It will vitalize the influence of this nation in behalf of peace.
It will make the nation impregnable in case of war, if, notwithstanding all
efforts to prevent it, war should come.
In the great crisis through which civilization is now passing, the United
States alone has the opportunity and the power to emancipate humanity from
militarism, and prevent it from ever again being drawn into the maelstrom
of war. Unless that is done, liberty, the world over, will be slowly
submerged by the subtle and insidious growth of military power in the
affairs of government, and our present civilization will ultimately go the
way of all the civilizations of the past.
If, on the other hand, this country rises to the opportunity, and provides
a system of national defense which will not only safeguard the nation
against foreign invasion or internal conflict, but will also at the same
time promote human advancement, insure all the blessings of peace to the
people, and check the growth of militarism, we will establish a
civilization that will endure as long as the human race can inhabit the
earth.
The first thing that must be done to achieve that boon for humanity is to
arouse the people of the United States to a realization of the fact that
the settlement of this great question cannot be left by anyone to somebody
else.
Every man and every woman, the length and breadth of the land, must enlist
in a great national campaign of education to get the real facts and all the
facts into the minds of the people.
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
This is a government, not so much by the people as by the _thought_ of the
people.
Right thought must precede right action. Knowledge must go before right
thought. The people cannot think right until they know the facts, and they
must study and understand and analyze those facts and face them squarely.
That can be brought about only by a nation-wide campaign in which every
patriotic citizen must participate. Each must first learn the facts himself
and then carry the knowledge to others--drive it home to them and stir them
to action.
To every reader of this book let it be said, as a personal message:
When you have read this book, do not lay it down with the thought:
"Yes, that is a good idea. I hope somebody will succeed in getting it
done."
Buckle on your own armor and helmet, lift up your own sword and shield, and
go right out into your own community and make converts yourself, who are
willing not only to think but to act and to _do things themselves_, to lift
the deepening shadow of militarism from this nation, and rescue the world
from the barbarism of war.
The souls of the people must be set on fire to fight a great battle for
peace and to save the ideals and traditions of our forefathers from being
submerged under the rising tide of militarism.
That battle must be fought with voice and pen against ignorance,
indifference, and every powerful interest intrenched in selfish opposition
to human advancement.
Popular interest must be stirred to its depths to create an irresistible
wave of public sentiment that will sweep away all opposition to the
necessary expenditures and legislation.
Every man who would be willing to serve his country in time of war must be
enlisted to serve it in time of peace, by fighting in advance of war to
safeguard against it and ultimately end it forever.
Every woman who wants the menace of war lifted from the lives of the women
of the world must show the faith that is in her by putting her whole heart
and soul into the work of enlisting her own community in this great
movement to do away with war, and to save the women of the future from the
inhuman cruelties and heart-breaking agonies that war has brought upon them
in the past.
The people of this country must stubbornly stand their ground to check the
future advance of militarism in the United States. For years it has been
stealthily gaining, while the people at large have paid no heed. Military
expenditures have grown larger and larger--they have trebled within a
generation--and the people have voiced no vigorous protest. _They have been
"asleep at the switch._"
There must be an end of this indifference of the majority of the people,
who have been selfishly and self-complacently attending to their own
affairs while the world has been drifting into a bloody welter of war. It
is only by chance that the United States has not already been drawn into
it. Complications may at any time arise which will involve this nation in
war.
An interest must be awakened as tense and vivid and all-compelling as would
be instantly aroused by an actual invasion of the United States by a
foreign enemy, and it must be awakened far in advance of that invasion, to
make sure that it never happens.
For nearly two thousand years the gentle admonition "On earth Peace, Good
Will toward men" has been the ideal which the human race has been
struggling to attain.
And after all these centuries we are in the midst of the most bloody and
destructive war the world has ever known.
Civilization has crashed backwards into the abyss of barbarism, in Europe
at least, and no one can foresee the end.
In the United States the trend is in the same direction. This country will
soon become a great military nation if the present tendency is not sharply
checked.
Mere ignorance and indifference on the part of the people of the United
States must not be allowed to stand in the way of the adoption of the
national policy advocated in this book--a policy that will bring permanent
and enduring universal peace to the world.
That policy must be adopted. There can be no alternative. The final triumph
of militarism would be too appalling to contemplate.
Must every woman who bears a son live under the terror that she may have to
dedicate him to be mangled in the service of the War God?
Must every home remain liable to be ruined and destroyed by the fires of
war?
Must every fair and beautiful garden-land continue to be subject to the
menace of devastation by marching armies or the bloody ruin of the
battlefields?
Must the flower of the world's manhood continue to be flung into the jaws
of death to satiate the blood lust of militarism?
Must the wheels of industry turn, and the sweat of human labor, for all
time, be given to make machinery for human slaughter?
Is there no inspiration to patriotism that will move the people to action
but the death combat?
Is there no glory to be won, that will stir heart and brain to supreme
effort, except by causing human agony and devastation?
Is there nothing else that will bring out the best there is in men but the
stimulus of war, and its demands for sacrifice, even of life itself?
Is there no higher service to their country to which women can give their
men than to die fighting to kill the men of other women?
Must this nation, as well as others, so impoverish itself by war and
preparation for war that nothing is left to pay for protecting itself
against Nature's destroying forces, flood and fire and waste of the
country's basic resources?
The intelligent and patriotic men and women of the United States would
answer every one of these questions, with all the fervor of their being, in
the way they must be answered to save civilization, if the questions could
be put to them, face to face, by anyone who was ready to show them what to
do to make good that answer and transform the desire into actual
accomplishment.
We must therefore arm the multitude with the facts and burn into their
minds the clear-cut definite vision of the plan that must be carried out to
make certain that accomplishment.
That plan must provide that we shall first do the things which the people
of this country can do by themselves alone without saying "by your leave"
or "with your help" to any other nation.
The influence of the adoption of a right national policy by the United
States will draw the world into the current as soon as its practicability
and benefits to humanity have been proved, but we must not begin with a
plan that will fail unless adopted by all the great powers of the world.
We cannot allow the success of our own basic plan for peace, _and for
safeguarding this nation against war_, to depend on the coöperation of any
other nation.
That has been the difficulty with nearly every plan heretofore proposed for
the permanent establishment of peace throughout the world. The agreement of
all the nations could not be had, and without such agreement the plan was
futile.
Disarmament or the limitation of armaments is impracticable without the
consent of all the great powers.
Nationalization of the manufacture of armaments, if it is to be a
world-wide influence, must have world-wide adoption.
No plan for a peace tribunal can be successfully made effective without all
nations agreeing to abide by its decrees.
And then it will fail unless given power to enforce its decrees.
That power will never be vested in it by the nations, not in this
generation at least.
All plans for arbitration rest on the same insecure foundation.
Arbitration voluntarily of any one controversy between nations is
practicable, where consent is expressly given to arbitrate that particular
controversy.
But a general plan based on an agreement made in advance to arbitrate all
future unknown controversies would be unenforceable and would afford no
assurance of peace.
The plan for an international force, either army or navy, is too remote a
possibility to be depended on now for practical results.
Agitation of these projects is commendable and should be encouraged, but we
cannot wait for their adoption to set our own house in order and insure its
safety.
In framing a national policy of peace for the United States, we must
constantly and clearly draw the line of distinction between the deep-seated
original causes of war, and causes which are secondary, or merely
precipitating incidents.
The assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo precipitated the
present war, but it was not the cause of the war.
Fundamentally, that cause was the check imposed by other nations on the
expansion of the German Empire. The necessity for that expansion resulted
from the rapid increase in the population, trade, and national wealth of
Germany.
The same problem faces the United States with reference to Japan and we
cannot evade it by any scheme for arbitration or disarmament. We must
squarely face and solve the economic problems that lie at the bottom of all
possible conflict between this nation and Japan.
A lighted match may be thrown into a keg of gunpowder and an explosion
result. It might be said that the match caused the explosion. In one sense
it did--_but it was not the match that exploded_.
And gunpowder must be protected against matches, if explosions are to be
avoided. So with national controversies. The economic causes must be
controlled, and conflict avoided by action taken long in advance of a
condition of actual controversy.
In our dealings with Japan, as will be shown hereafter, we are sitting on
an open keg of gunpowder, lighting matches apparently without the remotest
idea of the danger, or of the way to eliminate it.
But the situation on the Pacific Coast with reference to Japan is not the
first instance of similar risks that have been run with most appalling
losses as a consequence.
The danger of an earthquake in San Francisco was known to everybody.
Likewise it must have been known, if the slightest thought had been given
to it, that an earthquake might disrupt the water system of the city and
make it impossible to quench a fire that might be started by an earthquake.
As San Francisco is now heedless of the need for a policy that will really
settle the Japanese trouble, instead of aggravating it, so she was heedless
of the earthquake danger. That heedlessness cost the city $300,000,000 in
entirely unnecessary damage caused by fire. San Francisco was destroyed by
fire, not by the earthquake. The earthquake was unavoidable, the fire was
wholly preventable.
That sort of heedlessness is typical of the American people. Busy with the
present, they take no thought of the future. Every city in the United
States which is liable in any year to a great flood, is equally liable to a
great fire--a fire which might as completely destroy it as the San
Francisco fire destroyed that city, because, owing to the flood, all the
means provided for fire protection when there is no flood, would be
rendered useless by the flood.
Yet every such flood-menaced city in the United States stolidly runs the
risk. No general precautions are taken to prevent such destruction, though
it must be recognized as being possible at any time. Great floods will
rarely follow one another in the same place. For this reason, flood
protection for a city which has already suffered from a disastrous flood,
like Dayton, is no more important than similar protection for all other
flood-menaced cities. The only way to safeguard against floods, and the
consequent risk of fire losses in flood-menaced cities, is that _all such
cities_ should be completely protected against floods, under a nation-wide
policy for flood protection and prevention.
When appeal is made to Congress for legislation providing for such a policy
and for the appropriations necessary to make it effective, we are told that
so much money is required for military expenditures that none can be spared
for protection against floods.
Are we to go on for the next ten years doing as we have done in the last
ten, and spend another billion dollars for the army and fortifications,
while floods ravage unchecked?
If we had been getting actual protection from foreign invasion for that
billion dollars, there might have been some justification for its
expenditure; but we are getting neither protection from foreign invasion
nor protection from flood invasion.
The fact that the people of the country at large give no heed whatever to
the risk of tremendous losses of life and property by flood, arises from a
fixed habit of apathetic indifference, and the fact that no commercial
interest pushes steadily in behalf of flood protection.
There is money to be made, and large dividends may be earned, by furnishing
insurance against fire. Consequently the owner of every building in every
city is constantly reminded by insurance agents of the importance and
necessity of fire insurance. This has been done until public education,
stimulated by private profit, has created a habit of thought which
instinctively recognizes the danger of fire, and insures against it. The
property owner who now fails to carry fire insurance is commonly regarded
as assuming an unwarranted risk.
The same conditions exist from a national point of view with reference to
war. We build battleships, for example, largely because there is a huge
private profit made therefrom, which warrants a nation-wide propaganda to
educate and sustain a favorable public sentiment. The profit is large
enough to permit of propitiating troublesome opposition by endowing peace
palaces. That is a gruesome and ghastly hypocrisy that must come to an end,
if the world is ever to attain to universal peace.
The government should, if it needs them, build its own battleships; but the
first thing it should do, before it builds any more battleships, is to
provide for its other more pressing naval requirements, such as trained
men, target practice, transports, coaling stations with adequate coal
supplies, swift cruisers, torpedo boats, submarines, aëroplanes, and
ammunition.
After all that has been done, if it is made the law of the land that
dividends shall no longer be earned by private corporations from building
battleships or from manufacturing armor plate, it might be found that no
more battleships ought to be built. By that time naval experts may have
agreed that, as against torpedoes and aëroplanes, battleships are too
uncertain a defense, and may have decided that we need something else.
A battleship costs anywhere from ten to twenty million dollars, and they
are too expensive to be built for experiment or ornament.
The people of the United States have been relying on battleships for coast
defense, but all Britain's battleships did not protect Scarborough or
Hartlepool or Whitby. Neither have the battleships been able to protect
themselves from torpedoes, mines, or submarines.
Congress is a mirror. It merely reflects public sentiment. So long as the
need for battleships and more battleships--for bigger and still bigger
battleships--is constantly dinged into the ears of the people by the
profit-takers from the government, just that long will public sentiment,
and the legislation and appropriations that respond to it, be warped and
one sided. Our navy will continue to be top heavy with dreadnoughts, and
inadequate attention will be paid to the other things necessary for a
symmetrically equipped and efficient naval defense.
When private profits for building battleships shall have been eliminated,
Congress will no longer skimp appropriations to man the battleships we now
have, or for other naval equipment, in order to build more dreadnoughts.
After this war, it ought to be possible to conduct to success a
nation-wide, and possibly a world-wide propaganda to end forever the
earning of dividends from human slaughter.
That is the issue, bluntly and plainly stated, and those who profit by
manufacturing the machinery of war must face it squarely. The time will
come,--it is to be hoped it is near at hand,--when they will be held in the
same estimation as are nowadays the pirates who forced their victims to
walk the plank.
Over-preparedness, as well as unpreparedness, may precipitate a war. The
causes of the present European war were, however, more deeply rooted than
that. It was inevitable that they would some day result in war. But the war
would not have come at this time if Germany had not thought England
unprepared. Nor would it have come if Germany had not been, as she
supposed, invincible, because armed to the teeth by corporations like the
Krupps that make war and the machinery for it the source of stupendous
private profits and accumulated wealth.
The growing temptation to create similar conditions in this country must be
forever strangled. After the close of this war, the fields of battle in
Europe must be cleared of war's devastations, and in the United States of
America the field of industry must be cleared of all temptation for our
merchants and manufacturers to become slaughterers by wholesale of human
beings--murderers and manglers of whole battalions of their
fellowmen--slayers of the fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons of millions
of women. That is what they become when for money they furnish the means
whereby it is done, or is to be in future done, by this or any other
country.
It is far better that capital should be idle and labor unemployed than that
either should be used to promote death and devastation in return for
dividends or wages. All available capital and labor can find occupation in
doing things that will promote human welfare. To the extent that the
machinery of war may be needed by any government, it should be manufactured
for its own use by that government, and never by any private concern or
corporation for profit. A world movement to that end is being organized and
every patriotic citizen should bear a hand to promote its success. The
United States has the opportunity to be the first nation to adopt this
advanced and peace-promoting national policy.
Whenever we have put an end to the making of private profit from the
manufacture of battleships and machinery of war for our government, we will
be relieved of much of the persistent pressure to make our navy top heavy
with dreadnoughts, and to steadily increase our naval and military
expenditures. More than that, we will then be able to get full, fair, and
unprejudiced consideration, by the people at large, of every question
relating to war or peace, or to our own preparedness for war, or the extent
of the necessity for such preparedness.
Now the people know only a part of the facts on which a comprehensive
judgment should be based. They have been urged to do the things which, if
done, would result in profit to the manufacturers of battleships or
machinery of war. Knowing this, many people go to the other extreme and
oppose everything in the way of an adequate military or naval system. This
tends to endanger the nation by unpreparedness, just as the Militarists
would endanger it by over-preparedness, or a one-sided and unbalanced
preparedness, like having battleships without other things even more
necessary for naval defense.
The government should manufacture for itself all the machinery needed by it
for war on land or sea. Its manufacture by anyone else should be prohibited
by law. But it does not by any means follow that the government itself
should refrain from manufacturing it, under the conditions that now prevail
in the world. Neither does it follow that there will be no more wars. Nor
again does it follow that the government should fail to be at all times
adequately prepared for war. On the contrary, the possibility of war should
be fully recognized and national defense should not be neglected.
Under the conditions that surround this country to-day, no nation should
more carefully than ours safeguard against the danger of unpreparedness.
The United States should be, not unprepared, but fully prepared, and that
can only be accomplished by carrying out the plan advocated in this book,
for both immediate and ultimate national defense.
The assumption that this country will never be involved in a foreign war is
one which every fact of history, every trait of human character, and every
probability of the future proves to be unwarranted, unless measures are
taken and things done for national protection, and for the preservation of
peace, that are as yet not even contemplated by the people of this country.
The cost of those measures is so small, in comparison with the enormous
losses this country would suffer if it became involved in a foreign war,
that to forego them because of the cost involved would be as unwise as to
fail to equip a passenger steamer with life preservers as a matter of
economy.
CHAPTER II
_Advocates of Peace present no plan for national defense in case of war.
They leave it to the Militarists to provide for that contingency. The
Militarists have proposed no adequate plan for national defense. No plan
has been evolved, other than that urged in this book, which would in all
emergencies safeguard the nation against war, and at the same time be in
sympathy with and strengthen every movement to promote peace._
To make this clear, the various schools of thought on the subject should be
classified, and their views briefly outlined.
On the one hand we have the _Militarists_. They constantly clamor for a
bigger navy and a larger army on the ground that we are unprepared for
war--unarmed, unready, undefended--and that war is liable to occur at any
time.
On the other hand we have the _Passivists_. They have the courage of their
convictions. Believing in peace, they oppose war, and all the means
whereby it is made. Having faith in moral influence, they oppose armaments.
They are consistent, and urge that this nation should disarm and check
military expenditures. In their peace propaganda before the people they
have squarely and honestly contended for this national policy _for which
they deserve infinite credit_.
In case of war, they have no plan.
_They leave that to the Militarists._
Between these two extremes we have the _Pacificists_. They deplore war and
talk for peace, but believe in building battleships. They argue for
arbitration and advocate disarmament, but have not opposed steadily
increasing appropriations for naval and military expenditures by the United
States. They justify this position on the plea that the best guarantee
against war is an army and navy. They oppose war but not appropriations for
war. They hold peace conferences and pass peace resolutions, but do not go
before the committees of Congress and object to expenditures for armaments
and militarism. In this class belong all peace advocates who are builders
of battleships or manufacturers of armor plate or armaments, and their
associates.
This suggests the question whether such a manufacturer is a safe pilot for
a peace movement, however generously it may be subsidized, and whether an
armor-plate mill and a peace palace are appropriate trace-mates. It would
be unfortunate if the subtle influence of subconscious self-interest should
creep into peace councils or affect the policy of a peace movement. However
that may be, the theory that armaments prevent war has been pretty well
exploded by recent events.
The Pacificists, in case of war, have no plan of their own to propose.
_They, too, leave that to the Militarists._
Then we have the _Pacificators_.
They advocate disarmament and a tribunal of peace in the nature of an
international court to determine international differences and make binding
decrees; and they propose the establishment of an international army and
navy under the control of that court to enforce its decrees. Of course it
must be conceded that this plan may fail, or its success be long delayed,
and that in the meantime it affords no guarantee of peace.
The Pacificators, however, propose no plan in the event of war.
_They also leave that to the Militarists._
Finally comes the Woman's Movement for Constructive Peace, out of which has
grown the organization of the Woman's Peace Party.
Much may be hoped for from this organization if it will concentrate its
strength, and not try to do too many things at once.
If the women of the world will unite and put the same militant force behind
the peace movement that they have put behind the suffrage movement they can
end wars. There is no doubt of that. But it will require world-wide
organization, good generalship, and great concentration of effort. "One
thing at a time" should be their motto.
The following platform was adopted by the Woman's Peace Party:
"The purpose of this organization is to enlist all
American women in arousing the nations to respect the
sacredness of human life and to abolish war. (1) The
immediate calling of a convention of neutral nations in
the interest of early peace. (2) Limitations of
armaments and the nationalization of their manufacture.
(3) Organized opposition to militarism in our own
country. (4) Education of youth in the ideals of peace.
(5) Democratic control of foreign policies. (6) The
further humanizing of governments by the extension of
the franchise to women. (7) Concert of nations to
supersede 'balance of power.' (8) Action toward the
general organization of the world to substitute law for
war. (9) The substitution of an international police
for rival armies and navies. (10) Removal of the
economic causes of war. (11) The appointment by our
government of a commission of men and women, with an
adequate appropriation, to promote international
peace."
That platform is a well condensed outline of a very comprehensive program.
It covers the whole ground. Some of the things it advocates ought to be
possible of accomplishment within a few years. Others will require
generations. For example, it is well to frankly face the eventual necessity
for it, but democratic control of the foreign policies of Germany and
Russia, for instance, must be worked out by the people of those countries,
possibly through bloody political revolutions.
However, faith and not skepticism was the reason for publishing this
platform in full. The tenth plank, "Removal of the economic causes of war,"
would include many features of the plan proposed in this book. As embodied
in the book, the plan is specific. The platform is a generalization, and
might include many other plans.
But it will be observed that the platform does not suggest any plan as to
what should be done by the Woman's Peace Party in the event of war or to
safeguard the country from the dangers of actual war. They must concede
that war may occur, pending the partial or entire success of their campaign
to establish universal peace throughout the world. But they propose no plan
covering the contingency of war.
_They likewise leave that to the Militarists._
So, although we have plans galore to promote peace, we have in case of war
no plans except those of the Militarists.
They have three plans:
_First:_ A standing army large enough for any contingency.
_Second:_ A standing army, reënforced by state militia.
_Third:_ A standing army with a reserve composed of men who have served a
term of enlistment in the regular army.
None of these plans could be relied on for national defense in the event of
war between the United States and any one of the great world powers. That
will be fully demonstrated in the subsequent chapters of this book.
To insure the national safety as against such a contingency, a standing
army of over 500,000 men would be necessary. It would cost this country
$600,000,000 a year to maintain such a standing army, and the army itself
would be a more dangerous menace than a foreign invasion.
The utter worthlessness of state militia as a national defense in the event
of war with a first-class power is strongly set forth in the warning by
George Washington quoted in a later chapter.
The impracticability of a reserve force like that proposed by the
Militarists is clearly shown in the article from which quotations are made
in a later chapter by Honorable James Hay, Chairman of the Committee on
Military Affairs of the House of Representatives in the Congress of the
United States.
The situation when analyzed is certainly a most extraordinary one and can
only be accounted for on the theory that the people of this country are not
informed as to the facts and assume that we must be prepared for war, and
able to defend ourselves in case of war, by reason of the stupendous
expenditures we have been making for over ten years for the military branch
of the government. To the average man it would seem as though $250,000,000
a year ought to be enough to provide for the national defense.
The situation would be different if we had any assurance that the United
States would never again be involved in a war. In that event we would need
no plans for national defense.
_But we have no such assurance._
The Peace Advocates give no guarantee against war.
The Militarists believe war inevitable.
Neither insures peace and neither is prepared against war.
The people are between the upper and the nether millstone.
We cannot be certain of peace.
We are undefended in case of war.
The situation is illustrated by the old darkey's coon trap that would
"catch 'em either comin', or gwine."
The frank belief of the Militarists that war must be regarded as inevitable
is well expressed in the following quotation from a recent editorial in
"The Navy," a journal published at Washington, D.C.
"Since the beginning of the war in Europe, the
assertion has been repeatedly made that this is the
last great war; that the peoples of the world will be
so impressed with the wanton destruction of life and
property, that there will be organized some form of
international arbitration that will prevent future
wars. _Not so._ The war now raging between the nations
of Europe is much more probably but the first of a
series of tremendous world-wide conflicts that will be
fought by the inhabitants of the earth for national
supremacy, until the supremacy is obtained by a single
people, or possibly by an amalgamated race, the
ingredients of which are just now being thrown into the
melting pot.
"The wars of the past will sink into comparative
insignificance when future historians compile
statistics of coming conflicts among the nations of the
earth."
Whether all this be true or not, there is enough foundation for such
beliefs to make it imperative that the comprehensive and complete plan set
forth in this book should be adopted to harmonize the peace propaganda with
plans for national defense in case of war.
_It can be done and it must be done._
The plan proposed in this book will tremendously strengthen the peace
propaganda and there is no reason why every Militarist should not heartily
approve and accept it, unless he is making a profit out of the manufacture
of war machinery or dependent on it for employment.
In that event we must strongly appeal to patriotism and try to induce the
surrender of personal profit or benefit in order that we may preserve the
nation and promote human welfare.
Anyone who rejects the possibility of war must be blind to current events.
Sad indeed it is that it should be true, but none the less it is a staring
fact that every theory that war between civilized nations had ceased to be
possible has been rudely shattered by recent events.
Every prediction that there would be no more wars has proved false.
Every plan heretofore proposed to prevent war has thus far proved futile.
Every influence relied on to put an end to war has proved a broken reed.
The Socialists have inveighed against war.
Now they are voting war loans and fighting in the armies.
The labor organizations have long proclaimed their opposition to war.
The war is on, and they are apparently giving little attention to it.
Again and again it has been declared that kings make wars and the people
fight them.
That is all very true, in the past and in the present, but once more the
people are doing the fighting.
We have been told that the workingmen of the world have power to stop war.
No doubt they have, if they would use it, but they will not do so.
While this greatest of all the world's wars was brewing, the workingmen
were busy manufacturing the machinery of destruction.
And they are still doing it.
And they will keep on doing it, as long as wages are to be earned that way.
Every piece of shrapnel that crashes into a human brain, or tears a human
heart, or mangles a human hand on a battlefield has been laboriously and
patiently made by some other human hand working for wages in some factory.
Some manufacturer has thereby made a profit.
And the money to pay that profit was loaned to some Christian nation for
its war chest by some sanctimonious pawn-broker of the class described in
"Unseen Empire" by David Starr Jordan.
It is civilized warfare, among civilized nations, in this age of
civilization, sustained by civilized legislative representatives of
civilized people, conducted by civilized soldiers, equipped for human
destruction by civilized business men who furnish machinery of war that is
manufactured by civilized workingmen.
And the workingman makes wages, the business man earns his good dividends,
the banker gets his snug profit, and the man at the top, "the man on
horseback," who started the bloody orgy gets dividends, honors, special
privileges, and greater power as his share in this twentieth-century
massacre of humanity by the so-called humane methods of modern civilized
warfare.
_It is the hypocrisy of it all that makes it so revolting._
And if it were not that so many _are_ making wages or salaries or profits
or dividends out of the whole organized scheme of modern warfare, it would
be much easier to put an end to it. That is the vital point where the women
of the world should strike first if they are to end war.
It is the private profit made from war by a few that makes it so hard to
stop the ruin by war of the many.
The awful waste of war has been made clear, and yet the most monstrously
wasteful war of history is now being fought.
It has been urged that the huge debts owing for old wars made new wars
impossible, but stupendous new war loans are now being made.
The people of Europe were said to have reached the limit of endurance of
war burdens, but they are bending their backs for a heavier load.
America has expressed deep sympathy in the past for the war-ridden and
burden-bearing nations of Europe, overlooking apparently, at least in
recent years, some important facts.
Germany makes no hypocritical pretenses to being a nation of peace. She is
avowedly a nation of warriors and believes in war.
But she gets something for what she spends besides soldiers and
battleships.
While she has been perfecting the most stupendous and perfectly organized
war machine that has ever existed in the world, she has perfected just as
gigantic and splendidly effective machinery for conducting the affairs of
peace.
Her people may well smile in their sleeves at us when we condole with them
about the heavy war burdens that have been loaded upon them. They have at
least got something effective and efficient for their money. We have got
practically nothing.
Germany has, it is true, spent huge sums for armament, but at the same time
she has developed her internal resources, constructed vast public
improvements, planted great forests, and built a system of waterways that
is the marvel of the world.
Have we done the same? No.
Why not? Because we are told by the guardians of Uncle Sam's exchequer that
we cannot afford it. We spend so much money on our army and navy,--a
quarter of a billion dollars a year--for which we get nothing in
return,--not even national defense,--that we are told we cannot afford to
enter upon any great plans for internal improvements, or stop floods, or
regulate rivers, or build a genuine waterway system.
_And the people stand for it, and allow themselves to be "led by the nose
as asses are."_
This, of course, is very gratifying to the speculators and exploiters who
are gathering into their own capacious grab-bags what is left of the
natural resources of the country.
When this reason is added to their interest in armor-plate factories, it
may account for some of their zeal for militarism. And of course they
realize the necessity for a good large standing army that will keep the
people from being troublesome when they discover that their heritage has
been stolen from them. Any little incident like the French Revolution would
be excessively annoying to the intrenched interests in this country. An
army looks good to them, and the latch-string is always out, socially, to
the members of the military caste who greatly enjoy the hospitality of the
gilded caste.
Every one who looks at all four corners of the situation in this country
understands why every pretext is seized upon to get bigger and bigger
appropriations for the army and navy. A navy provides a big profit in armor
plate and an army provides protection for that profit.
_The Wizards of Wall Street are wise._
They see a long way ahead. The people never see very far. They are easily
scared by a hue and cry about unpreparedness when naval or military
appropriations are wanted.
They readily swallow the bait of economy, when the interests desire to
defeat an appropriation that is needed to develop natural resources
belonging to the people that are coveted by the Water Power Syndicates, or
an appropriation that is needed to build waterways which would make
competition for railroads.
Water Power Syndicates and Railroads and Armor-Plate Mills are all
controlled by the same coterie of intrenched interests. They understand
each other and work together perfectly without even the necessity for a
gentleman's agreement.
_The people have been asleep a long time but some day they will wake up._
For years the Gospel of Peace has been proclaimed to the world from the
United States. During that period we have been busy building battleships
and piling up great private fortunes from making armor plate. We have been
urging disarmament while spending millions to increase our own armaments.
We have been advocating arbitration while constantly increasing our
military expenditures.
Since the day when Congress in a frenzy of patriotic outburst voted fifty
millions in fifteen minutes to start our war with Spain, the peace
propaganda has been vigorously prosecuted and in that period we have had
war after war: the Spanish-American War, the Russo-Japanese War; war in the
Philippines, war in Greece, war in the Balkans, war in South Africa, war in
Algeria, war in Morocco, war in Tripoli, war in Mexico, war again in the
Balkans, and now nearly all of Europe is ablaze with war and its flames are
reddening Asia and Africa.
It gives one an unpleasant, gruesome feeling to think about it. The
substance seems always to have been on the side of war, the shadow only on
the side of peace.
That is no reason why the movement for peace should be abandoned, but is it
not a reason for completely changing the ideals and methods of the peace
movement, and adopting a plan such as is embodied in this book for a
constructive peace propaganda, that will strengthen the peace movement, and
at the same time solve our most difficult internal social and economic
problems and make sure that if war ever does befall us we will be found not
unprepared, not unarmed, not unready, not undefended?
If everything were done that the most extreme Militarist advocates, we
would still be undefended, and we will remain so until our whole military
system is constructed anew, and a real system of national defense organized
as outlined in this book.
_The Frankenstein of war can be controlled._
But it can only be controlled by organizing a system of national defense
against Nature's destroying forces, which can, by touching a button, be
instantly transformed, if need be, into a force for national defense
against a foreign invasion or to uphold the rights or honor of the nation.
CHAPTER III
_The Militarists will never initiate an adequate system for national
defense in the United States, because such a system necessitates an
organization under civil control in time of peace. It must be an
organization that will at all times act as a self-operating and
self-perpetuating influence to promote peace and prevent war. It must also
automatically and instantly become an impregnable defense against foreign
attack or invasion if, in spite of all precautions and efforts to prevent
it, war should actually occur at any time in the future._
Whatever we do for national defense should be done primarily to _prevent_
and _safeguard against_ the breaking out of war. Every plan for national
defense should, like the plan proposed in this book, be formulated with
that end in view. That should be its clearly defined objective. There
should be no possibility of any mistake about that. It should be made so
plain that there never could be any misunderstanding as to that being the
primary purpose of the plan.
A national force should be organized primarily for civil duty in time of
peace. It should be organized in such a way that it could at a moment's
notice be converted into a military machine for national defense in case of
war. But that conversion should be a secondary object. The necessity for
such a conversion should be regarded as a remote possibility, to prevent
which every human power would be exerted, but which might occur,
notwithstanding all that could be done to prevent it.
An illustration of this situation might be drawn from the case of an
aëroplane constructed for aërial service. It would be needed and built for
work in the air. But if it were possible that it might be needed for use
over water, then it might be so constructed that in the event of falling on
the water it could still keep afloat and propel itself. Aërial navigation
would be the primary purpose of its construction. Water navigation would be
secondary, and not intended to be resorted to except in case of accident.
It would serve as a safeguard against death which might otherwise be caused
by an event only remotely possible.
If the necessity for making our system for national defense primarily an
instrument of peace is constantly borne in mind, it will make progress
easier and more rapid and certain. It will eliminate many complications
that would result if we should undertake to look to the military
establishment to formulate plans for a system of national defense that
would be operative for peace as well as for war. In the past the whole
matter of national defense has been left to the Army and Navy. That is the
reason why no satisfactory system has been evolved. Naturally the Army and
the Navy can see nothing in any plan which does not involve simply a
greater army and a greater navy.
If it is now left to the War Department to make plans for a military system
that will be adequate for national defense, there are many reasons why a
satisfactory system will never be devised. The idea would be
incomprehensible to a Regular Army man that a national organization,
available for civil duties in time of peace, could in time of war be
automatically expanded into a military machine strong enough for the
national defense.
Men educated and trained in the military profession do not comprehend
conditions outside of the purely military environment in which they live.
They do not understand humanity or the temper of the people in civil life.
They have been trained in an atmosphere of social exclusiveness and
educated to believe that they belong to a superior caste. They live in a
world of their own, separate and apart from their fellowmen. This is every
whit as true in America as it is in Germany. The only difference is in the
relative size of the armies.
The Militarists have no real sympathy with any peace movement. They say
that we always have had war and that we always will have war. They look
forward with enthusiastic anticipation to the next war as an opportunity
for activity and promotion. War is their trade, their profession. They
regard with patronizing pity all who have risen to the higher level that
regards war as an anarchistic anachronism, and are willing to make any
sacrifice to end it forever. They have never read the chapter entitled "The
Iron in the Blood" in "The Coming People," by Charles F. Dole.
They are devoted to their duty, as they understand it, and are as brave and
loyal _soldiers_ as ever existed on the earth. But really it is
unreasonable to expect a soldier to be anything but a Militarist. He is
bred if not born to war, trained to fight and to study the war game, the
war maneuvers, to fortify, to attack, to repel, to figure out a masterly
retreat if it becomes necessary. You cannot expect him to be a peace
advocate or to work out plans which will prevent or abolish war. It is no
part of his duty as he sees it to undertake to devise plans for peace that
would render the professional soldier obsolete and relegate him and his
brother soldiers to a place by the side of the chivalrous Knights of the
Middle Ages, or the Crusaders who fought the Saracens to rescue the Holy
Sepulcher from the infidels--picturesque and romantic but expensive and
useless.
Moreover, Army officers are hampered in all planning for constructive work
by their rigid adherence to precedent. They have a medieval contempt for
everything non-military, and for all civil duties and affairs. All this
results from the existence of a military caste in this country which is as
supercilious, self-opinionated, and autocratic as the military aristocracy
of the most military ridden nation of Europe.
They lack initiative and originality because their whole education has
operated to drill it out of them, and to make men who are mere machines,
doing what they are told to do, _and doing it well_, but doing nothing
else. That is the exact opposite of the type of mind demanded in an
emergency requiring initiative and the genius to originate and carry out
new and better ways of doing things than those that have prevailed in the
past.
Men with the military training appear to entirely lack the analytical mind
that seeks for _causes_, and comprehends that by removing the _cause_, the
evil itself may be safeguarded against, or may in that way be prevented
from ever coming into existence.
_This fact is well illustrated by the stupendous losses the country has
suffered from floods because the Army Engineers have for years so
stubbornly refused to consider plans for controlling floods at their
sources._
Solid arrays of facts presented to them have contributed nothing to
breaking down their stolid egotism.
They will not originate, or approve, any plan that does not center
everything that is proposed to be done in the War Department and thereby
enlarge its influence and prestige. They oppose every plan to coördinate
the War Department with other departments, or to put the Army on the same
plane with the others in working out plans for constructive coöperation.
The members of the military caste do not seem to be able to comprehend that
the stamp of an inferior caste which they put upon enlisted men, and the
menial services exacted from private soldiers by their officers, create
conditions that are revolting to every instinct of a man with the right
American spirit of self-respect. They are a relic of the barbaric period
when the private soldier was an ignorant brute. Those conditions alone are
sufficient to render impracticable any plan for a reserve composed of
soldiers who have served out their term of enlistment.
In "On Board the Good Ship Earth," Herbert Quick says:
"All institutions must sooner or later be transformed
so as to accord with the principles of democracy--or
they must be abolished. The great objection to standing
armies is their conflict with democracy. They are
essentially aristocratic in their traditions. The
officers must always be 'Gentlemen' and the privates
merely men. The social superiority of officer over man
is something enormous. Every day's service tends to
make the man in the ranks a servile creature, and the
man with epaulettes a snob and a tyrant."
The standing army to-day represents an economic waste of labor of the
entire body of enlisted men. Many soldiers are demoralized by the
inactivity or idleness of the life of the camp or the barracks.
The whole conception of the military caste as to what the Army ought to be
is medieval and monstrously wrong. The United States Army should be a
training school for the very highest type of self-respecting, independent,
and self-sustaining citizenship that this country can produce. It should be
a great educational institution, training every enlisted man to be an
officer in the Reserve, or to be a Homecrofter after he returns to private
life. Daily manual constructive labor should be a part of every soldier's
duty. The relation between officer and enlisted men should be that of
instructor and student. Such a relation is entirely consistent with the
absolute authority that would be vested in the instructor.
The Army System should be such that an opportunity to serve a term as an
enlisted man would be coveted as much as an appointment to West Point is
now coveted. The Army should train men for civil life and citizenship, not
ruin them for it as it now so often does.
The many wrong conditions above referred to result from the unfortunate
attitude of mind of those who compose the military caste. They would make
it impracticable to ever successfully carry out any plan for useful
constructive labor by enlisted men in the military service. If such a
Reserve were made subject to the control of the War Department, it would be
impossible to ever enlist as a Reserve a construction force composed of men
who believe in the dignity of labor and refuse to recognize the superiority
of any caste in American life or citizenship.
If this statement is not a fact, why is it that no useful, constructive
work is accomplished by the fifty odd thousand able-bodied enlisted men of
our Regular Army? The same men would accomplish superhuman manual labor in
case of war. And the same conditions would obtain if our army was 100,000
or 200,000 or 500,000 strong.
This wasteful situation taken as a whole makes it impracticable to work out
any plans which might otherwise be initiated or formulated by the War
Department for creating a great reserve force that would be entirely under
the control of the civil departments of the national government in time of
peace. It is imperative that such civil control should prevail. Were it
otherwise, the same danger of military domination in government affairs
would arise that would result from the maintenance of a standing army in
this country large enough to serve as a national defense in time of war
with any first-class power.
_And the establishment of a National Construction Service as a Reserve
force, enlisted for work to be done under civil control in time of peace,
but available for military service in time of war, constitutes one of the
most practicable plans for creating a Reserve from which an army for
national defense could be instantly mobilized in time of war._
The plan proposed by the War Department, of a short term of service in the
regular army, followed by liability to service in a reserve made up of men
discharged after this short-service term, could never be worked out
effectively.
The impracticability of that plan has been clearly shown by Representative
James Hay, Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of
Representatives, in a recent magazine article in which he says:
"Military authorities, backed by the opinions of many
persons high in civil life, insist that we should be
provided with an adequate reserve of men, so that we
may in any time of trouble have men who will be
prepared to enter the army fully trained for war. In
this I concur; but in a country where military service
is not compulsory the method of providing a reserve is
an extremely complex problem, one that has not yet been
satisfactorily solved by anybody. It is proposed, among
other things, to have short enlistments, and thus turn
out each year a large number of men who will be trained
soldiers. Let us examine this for a moment and see
where it will lead, and whether any good will come out
of it, either for the army or for the country.
"After giving this question of a reserve for the army
the most careful thought, after having heard the
opinion of many officers of our army,--and those too
best qualified to give opinions on a matter of this
sort,--I am convinced that, under our system of
military enlistment, it is impracticable to
accumulate, with either a long-term or a short-term
enlistment period, a dependable reserve force of fairly
well trained men. To use our army as a training school
would destroy the army as such, and fail utterly to
create any reserve that could be depended upon as a
large body of troops.
"The proposal of the General Staff of the army has been
that the men should enlist for two years and then spend
five years in the reserve. The five years in the
reserve is impossible in this country, because we have
no compulsory military service and because it is
intended by the authors of the plan not to pay the
reserve men. And it is an open-and-shut proposition
that men cannot be expected to enter the reserve
voluntarily, without pay, when the regulations would
require them to submit to such inconveniences as
applying to the department for leave to go from one
State to another or into a foreign country, and when
they would be compelled to attend maneuvers, often at
distant points, at least twice a year."
The Militarists, the professional military men, and those who draw their
inspiration from that source, present no plan for enlarging our army in
time of war except:
(1) The proposed Reserve system so clearly shown in the above quotation to
be impracticable; (2) Reliance upon State Militia to reënforce the regular
army--a plan rejected by all who are willing to learn by experience; and
(3) The increase of the standing army, to bring it up to a point where it
could at any time cope with the standing armies of other powers, and its
maintenance there.
Another quotation from the same article by Representative Hay will give the
facts that show the impracticability of the plan for increasing the
standing army:
"But, in order to make more evident what Congress has
given to the army and the consequent results that must
have been obtained therefrom, let me call attention to
the fact that during the last ten years the
appropriations for the support of the military
establishments of this country have amounted to the
grand total of $1,007,410,270.48, almost as much as is
required to pay all the other expenses of the
government, all the salaries, all the executive
machinery, all the judiciary, everything, for an entire
year.
"Thus, during this period, the army appropriations have
annually been from $70,000,000 to $101,000,000; the
Military Academy appropriations, from $673,000 to
$2,500,000 a year; for fortifications, from $4,000,000
to $9,300,000; for armories and arsenals, from
$330,000 to $860,000; for military posts, from $320,000
to $4,380,000; by deficiency acts, military
establishment, from $657,000 to $5,300,000; and for
Pacific railroads transportation and the enlisted men's
deposit fund, a total for the ten years of $11,999,271.
"The totals for the ten fiscal years 1905 to 1915 have
been as follows:
Permanent appropriations (including
Pacific railroads transportation and
enlisted men's deposit fund) $11,999,271.00
Fortification acts, armories and arsenals,
and military posts in sundry
civil acts, and deficiencies for military
establishments in deficiency
acts 113,071,133.17
Army appropriation acts 868,536,993.31
Military Academy acts 13,802,873.00
----------------
Total $1,007,410,270.48
"However, in spite of this showing of the great expense
of maintaining a small army, the Militarists keep up
their clamor--particularly at such a time as this, and
again whenever a military appropriation bill is up for
consideration in the House--that this country be
saddled with a great standing army. There is not the
slightest need of such an establishment. But, if there
were some slight indication of trouble with a fully
equipped great power, would the people of this country
be ready to embark on a policy that would mean the
permanent maintenance of a regular standing army of
500,000 men? It would cost this country, at a
conservative estimate, $600,000,000 a year to go
through with such an undertaking."
Now after fully weighing that situation in the mind, as set forth by
Representative Hay, put beside it the following facts as given by Homer
Lea, in "The Valor of Ignorance":
"European nations in time of peace maintain armies from
three hundred and fifty thousand to five hundred
thousand men and officers, together with reserves of
regulars varying from two to five million, with a
proportionate number of horses and guns, for the same
money that the United States is obliged to expend to
maintain _fifty thousand_ troops with _no reserve_ of
regulars.
"_Japan could support a standing peace army exceeding
one million men for the same amount of money this
Republic now spends on fifty thousand._
"This proportion, which exists in time of peace,
becomes even more excessive in time of war; for
whenever war involves a country there exists in all
preparation an extravagance that is also proportionate
to the wealth of the nation.
"_During the last few years of peace, from 1901 to
1907, the United States Government has expended on the
army and navy over fourteen hundred million dollars: a
sum exceeding the combined cost to Japan of the Chinese
War and the Russian War, as well as the entire
maintenance of her forces during the intervening years
of peace._"
And again, the same author says:
"A vast population and great numbers of civilian
marksmen can be counted as assets in the combative
potentiality of a nation as are coal and iron ore in
the depths of its mountains, but they are, _per se_,
worthless until put to effective use. This Republic,
drunk only with the vanity of its resources, will not
differentiate between them and actual power.
"_Japan, with infinitely less resources, is militarily
forty times more powerful._
"Germany, France, or Japan can each mobilize in _one
month_ more troops, scientifically trained by educated
officers, than this Republic could gather together in
_three years_. In the Franco-Prussian War, Germany
mobilized in the field, ready for battle, over half a
million soldiers, more than one hundred and fifty
thousand horses and twelve hundred pieces of artillery
in _five days_. The United States could not mobilize
for active service a similar force in _three years_. A
modern war will seldom endure longer than this.
"Not only has this nation no army, but it has no
military _system_."
We have in the United States a military establishment adequate to
suppressing riots, controlling mobs, preventing local anarchy, and
protecting property from destruction by internal disturbance or uprisings
in our own country. As a national police force, our army is an entirely
adequate and satisfactory organization. But policing a mining camp and
fighting an invading army, are two widely different propositions. So would
fighting a Japanese army be from fighting a few Spaniards or Filipinos.
When it comes to a "military system" adapted to the needs of a foreign war
with a first-class nation, we have none; and thus far none has been
proposed. A system that depends on creating the machinery for national
defense by any plan to be undertaken _after hostilities have begun_, is no
system at all, and cannot be classed as a system for national defense. It
is a system for national delusion. A Volunteer Army belongs in this class,
and so in fact does the State Militia.
The question of national defense involves two separate and distinct
problems:
First, the defense of the nation against invasion by another nation.
Second, the defense of the nation and of its social, civil, and political
institutions from internal disturbance and civil conflict.
It may safely be assumed that there will never again be a civil conflict
between any two different sections of this country. That there will
inevitably be such a conflict between contending forces within the body
politic itself, no sane man will deny, if congested cities and tenement
life are to be allowed to continue to degenerate humanity and breed poverty
and misery. They will ultimately undermine and destroy the mental and
physical racial strength of the people. We will then have a population
without intelligence or reasoning powers. Such a proletariat will
constitute a social volcano, an ever present menace to internal peace.
Conflicts such as that which so recently existed in Colorado, approach very
closely to civil war. They have occurred before. They will occur again.
They may occur at any time. Whenever they do occur, it may be necessary to
invoke the power of the nation, acting through the army as a police force,
to preserve the peace and protect life and property.
For that work it must be conceded that we need an army. As it has been well
expressed, we need "a good army but not a large army." It may be conceded
that we need for that purpose, and for Insular and Isthmian Service, and
for garrison duty, an army as large as that now authorized by Congress when
enlisted to the full strength of 100,000 men, _but no more_. Set the limit
there and keep it there, and fight any plan for an increase.
The question whether we should have an army of 50,000 men or 100,000 men is
of comparatively small importance. As to that question there need be no
controversy on any ground except that of comparative wisdom of expenditure.
There are other things this country should do, _that it is not doing_, of
more importance than to maintain an army of 100,000 instead of 50,000, or
than to build more battleships at this time.
An army needed as a national police force to safeguard against any sort of
domestic disturbance is a very different proposition from the army we would
need in the event of a war with any of the great world powers. An army of
100,000 is as large as we will ever need to safeguard against domestic
disturbance. An army any larger than that, for that purpose, should be
opposed as a menace to the people's liberties, and a waste of the nation's
revenues.
It is conceded on all sides, however, that if it ever did happen, however
remote the possibility may be, that the United States became involved in a
war with a foreign nation of our own class, an army of 100,000 men would be
impotent and powerless for national defense. So would an army of 200,000
men. An army of 200,000 is twice as large as we should have in time of
peace. In the event of war with any first-class power we would have to
have an army five or ten times 200,000.
It would therefore be utterly unwarranted and unwise to increase our
standing army from 100,000 to 200,000. There is no reasonable ground or
hypothesis on which it can be justified. Any proposition for such an
increase should meet with instant and just condemnation and determined
opposition.
A war between the United States and some other great power is either
possible or it is impossible. If it is impossible, then we need do nothing
to safeguard against it. If it is possible, either in the near or distant
future, then we should safeguard against it adequately and completely; we
should do _everything that may be necessary to prevent war or to defend
ourselves in the event of war_.
To say that war is impossible is contrary to all common sense and reason,
and runs counter to conclusions forced by a careful study of probabilities
and of the compelling original causes for war that may in their evolution
involve this nation.
Field Marshal Earl Roberts told the English people, over and over again,
that they were in imminent danger of a war with Germany. No one believed
him--at least not enough of them to make any impression on public
sentiment--and England was caught unprepared by the present war.
Therefore, let full weight be given to Lord Roberts' declaration and
warning as to the future, as recently published:
"_I would ask them not to be led away by those who say
that the end of this great struggle is to be the end of
war, and that it is bound to lead to a great reduction
of armament. There is nothing in the history of the
world to justify any such conclusion. Nor is it
consonant with ordinary common sense._"
Such a statement as this, from such a man, cannot be whistled down the
wind. This country must inevitably face the condition that in all
probability the present war will increase rather than reduce the danger
that the United States may become involved in war.
It may be argued that Germany, once a possible antagonist, will be so
weakened by this great conflict as not to desire another war. The contrary
will prove true. If Germany should prevail, the ambition of her War Lords
would know no limit, until Germany dominated the world.
If Germany should not prevail, no matter how much she may be humbled by
defeat, she will start over again, with all the latent strength of her
people, to rebuild from the ruins a more powerful military nation than she
has ever been. With the record before us of what Germany has accomplished
since the close of the Thirty Years' War, can anyone deny that a great
Teutonic military power might again be developed from the ashes of a ruined
nation?
If we look across the Pacific at Japan, we see a nation strengthened and
proudly conscious of victory as a result of the present war. Whatever other
nations may suffer, Japan gets nothing from this war but national
advancement and national glory. The latter is a mighty asset for her,
because of the inspiration and stimulus it affords to her people in all
their national efforts and ambitions for advancement and expansion.
Russia, England, and France, however great their losses may be, will come
out of this war with enormously enlarged national strength, and with their
national forces solidified and concentrated behind the military power in
those governments. In none of them will this new accretion and
concentration of military governmental power be thereafter voluntarily
limited or surrendered.
Let us then not deceive ourselves by any visions of world peace which exist
only in dreams, or follow shadows into the quicksands in which we would
find ourselves mired down if this nation were caught unprepared in a war
with any of the great nations above named.
The question of national defense, in the event of such a war, is not one of
battleships, so on that point we need not trouble ourselves much with the
controversy about how many battleships this country should build in a year.
If we had as many battleships as England has to-day, they might prove a
broken reed when tested as a means of national defense in case of a war
with either England, France, or Japan.
A standing army of 100,000 men, or even of 200,000 men, would prove utterly
inadequate for our national defense in such a war. Worse than that, our
whole military system is fatally defective. It entirely lacks the capacity
of instant automatic expansion necessary to quickly put an army of a
million men in the field. It would be imperative and unavoidable that we
should do so, the moment we became involved in war with a first-class
power. A million men would be the minimum size of the army we would need
the instant war started with any great nation like Japan. As a system for
national defense in such a war our standing army is a dangerous delusion.
Its existence, and the false reliance placed on it, delays the adoption of
a system that would prove adequate to any emergency.
The militia system of the United States is another delusion, and in case of
war would be little better than useless. Washington had his own bitter
experiences to guide him, and he warned the people of this country against
militia in the following vigorous terms:
"Regular troops alone are equal to the exigencies of
modern war, as well for defense as offense, and when a
substitute is attempted, it must prove illusory and
ruinous.
"No Militia will ever acquire the habits necessary to
resist a regular force. The firmness requisite for the
real business of fighting is only to be attained by
constant course of discipline and service.
"I have never yet been a witness to a single instance
that can justify a different opinion, and it is most
earnestly to be wished that the liberties of America
may no longer be trusted, in a material degree, to so
precarious a defense."
In the face of all these facts, the people of the United States are groping
in the dark. They may have a vague and glimmering idea of their danger, but
as yet no definite and practicable plan for national defense in case of war
has been suggested, except that proposed in this book.
The beautiful iridescent dream and vision of an army of a million patriotic
souls hurrying to the colors in the event of national danger brings only
counter visions of Bull Run and Cuba, of confusion, waste, death, and
devastation, before we could possibly get these men officered, trained,
equipped, and organized to fight any first-class power according to the
methods of modern warfare.
As an illustration, what would our pitifully small army, and our almost raw
and untrained levies of militia, do in a grim conflict with the 200,000
trained and seasoned and perfectly armed and equipped soldiers which Japan
could land on our shores within four weeks, or the 500,000 she could land
in four months, or the 1,000,000 she could land in ten months? We could not
by any possibility get a military force of equal strength into action on
the Pacific coast in that length of time or in anywhere near it.
That is where our danger lies, and therein exists the startling menace of
our unpreparedness for war. It is not that we lack men or money. No nation
in the world has better soldiers than those now serving under our flag. We
no doubt have the raw material for a larger army than any nation or any two
nations could utilize for the invasion of our territory, but any one of
three or four nations could humble and defeat us several times over before
we could whip this raw material into shape for a fighting force and get it
armed and equipped for actual warfare.
The conclusion from this would on the surface naturally seem to be that we
must have a larger standing army. The strange and apparently contradictory
but undeniable fact is that a larger standing army, organized in accordance
with our present military system, would merely increase our danger, and
might precipitate a war that would otherwise have been avoided.
A great standing army in this country would ultimately create the same
national psychological condition that existed in Germany before this last
war. There were many who averred when this war broke out that it was the
war of the Kaiser and his War Lords, and contrary to the spirit and wishes
of the German people. The exact opposite has been thoroughly established.
Strange as it may seem, we must accept the fact that the German people, as
the result of generations of education from childhood to manhood, look upon
war as a necessary element of German expansion and the growth of the
empire to which they are all patriotically devoted.
More than this, ringed about as they have been for centuries with a circle
of armed adversaries, it was inevitable that a spirit should be developed
in the minds of the people that their only safety as a nation lay in
Militarism, however much they might deplore its necessity as individuals,
groan under its burdens, or personally dread military service.
The moment the people of the United States accepted as a fact the belief
that a standing army large enough for national protection is the only way
for this country to safeguard against an armed adversary, that moment would
the attitude of mind of our people towards war become the same as that of
Germany and France. After this war it will be the attitude of mind of the
people of Great Britain. England has been shaken to her core, and never
again will she be found unprepared for war at any moment that it may come.
CHAPTER IV
_The system for national defense in the United States must embrace a
National Construction Reserve, organized primarily to fight Nature's forces
instead of to fight the people of another nation. It must be so organized
that it will furnish a substitute for the supreme inspiration to
patriotism, and the tremendous stimulus to energy and organized effort that
war has furnished to the human race through all the past centuries of the
existence of the race._
This National Construction Reserve must be an organized force of men
regularly enlisted for a term in the service of the national government.
The men in the Reserve must be under civil control when engaged in
construction service, and under military control when in military service
in time of war. Those enlisted in the Reserve would labor for their country
in construction service in time of peace, building great works of internal
improvement and constructive national development, with exactly the same
spirit of patriotic service that they would fight under the flag and dig
trenches or build fortifications in time of war.
We must organize this National Construction Reserve for a conflict to
conquer, subjugate, and hold in strong control the forces of Nature. We
must organize our national forces and expend our national revenues for that
conflict, instead of organizing them for devastation and human slaughter.
We must organize a national system that will create, not destroy; that will
conserve, not waste, human life, and homes, and the country's resources.
We must plan to enlist our national forces in a great conflict with Nature,
_to save life and property_, instead of enlisting them in conflicts with
other nations _to destroy life and property_. We must develop a patriotism
that will be as active in constructive work in time of peace as in
destructive work in time of war. We must enlist a National Construction
Reserve that will put forth in time of peace for constructive human
advancement the same extraordinary energy and invincible determination
that war arouses.
The construction work of the Forest Service should be done by a
Construction Corps enlisted in that Service. Every forester should be a
reservist. A regularly enlisted force of fire-fighters and tree-planters
should be organized--tens of thousands of them--to fight forest fires and
to fight deserts and floods by planting forests. The planting and care of
new forests should be done by regularly organized companies of enlisted
men, detailed for that work, exactly as they would be detailed for a
soldier's duties in time of war.
The work of the Reclamation Service should be done, not by hired
contractors, but by a Construction Corps of men enlisted in that Service.
They should be set to work building all the works necessary to reclaim
every acre of desert land and every acre of swamp or overflow land that can
be reclaimed in the United States.
The cost of all reclamation work done by the national government should be
charged against the land and repaid with interest from the date of the
investment. The interest charge should be no more than the government would
have to pay on the capital invested, with an additional annual charge
sufficient to form a sinking fund that would repay the principal in fifty
years.
The work of the Forest Service as well as that of the Reclamation Service
should be put on a business basis. New forests should be planted where
their value when matured will equal the investment in their creation, with
interest and cost of maintenance.
The same system of enlisting a Construction Corps to do all construction
work should be adopted in every department of the national government which
is doing or should be doing the vast volume of construction work which
stands waiting at every hand. Each branch should have its regularly
enlisted Construction Corps.
All the different branches of the government dealing in any way with
forestry or with the conservation, use, or control of water, in the War
Department, Interior Department, Agricultural Department, or Commerce
Department, should be coördinated and brought together in a Board of River
Regulation. The coördination of their work should be made mandatory by law
through that organization. All the details of perfecting the formation of
the Construction Reserve and its organization for constructive service in
time of peace and for military service in time of war should be worked out
through this coördinating Board of River Regulation.
The duty of the men enlisted in the National Construction Reserve would be
not only to do the work allotted to them, but to do it in such a way as to
dignify labor in all the works of peace. It should show the patriotic
spirit with which work in the public service can be done to protect the
country from Nature's devastations. It should demonstrate that such work
can be done in time of peace, with the same energy and enthusiasm that
prevail in time of war.
_But in case of war_, the National Construction Reserve must be so
organized that it can be instantly transformed into _an army of trained and
seasoned soldiers_--soldiers that can beat their plowshares into swords at
a day's notice, and as quickly beat the swords back into plowshares when
weapons are no longer needed.
In the development of this idea lies the assured safety of this nation
against the dangers of unpreparedness in the event of war. There will be
more than work enough for such a Construction Reserve to do in time of
peace for generations yet to come.
Such floods as those which swept through the Mississippi Valley in 1912 and
1913 are _an invasion by Nature's forces_. They bring ruin to thousands and
devastate vast areas. They overwhelm whole communities with losses as great
as the destruction which would be caused by the invasion of an armed force.
Floods of that character are national catastrophes, as are likewise such
floods as that which devastated the Ohio Valley in 1913, and the more
recent floods in Southern California and Texas. Floods should be
safeguarded against by an organized national system for flood protection.
That National System for River Regulation and Flood Control should be
brought into being and impelled to action by an overwhelming mental force,
generated in the minds of the whole people. It should be a power as
irresistible as that which projected us into the war with Spain, after the
Maine was blown up in Havana harbor.
The ungoverned floods which for years have periodically devastated the
Great Central Valley of the United States can never be wholly safeguarded
against by any sort of local defense. They must be controlled at their
sources. The problem is interstate and national. Works to prevent floods in
the Lower Mississippi Valley from Cairo to the Gulf of Mexico, must be
constructed, maintained, and operated on every tributary of the Ohio, the
Upper Mississippi, and the Missouri Rivers--a stupendous project but
entirely practicable.
The water must be conserved and controlled where it originally falls. It
must be held back on the watershed of every source stream. If this were
done, the floods of the Ohio River Valley could be so reduced, and the
flow of the river so regulated, as never in the future to cause damage or
destruction.
The same is true of the Missouri and the Upper Mississippi Rivers. If the
floods were controlled on the source streams and upper tributaries, the
floods of the Lower Mississippi could be protected against by levees,
supplemented by controlled outlets and spillways as additional safeguards.
Millions of garden homes could in that way be made as safe in the delta of
the Mississippi River now annually menaced by overflow as anywhere on the
high bench lands or plateaus of the Missouri Valley.
To do this work would be to defend a territory twice as large as the entire
cultivated area of the Empire of Japan against the annual menace of
destruction by Nature's forces.
Is not that a national work that is worth doing? Is not that the right sort
of national defense? Is it not an undertaking large enough to arouse and
inspire the whole people of this great nation to demand its
accomplishment?
To do it right, and to do it thoroughly and effectively, necessitates the
systematic organization of a Construction Corps under national direction
for that work. It would require that we should put forth national energy as
powerful, and mental and physical effort as vigorously effective, as that
demanded by war.
Why then should not a National Construction Reserve be organized to do that
work as efficiently in time of peace as it could be done by a military
organization in time of war, if the doing of it were a war necessity
instead of a peace measure?
If we ever succeed in safeguarding this and other nations against war, it
will be because we have learned to do the work of peace with the same
energy, efficiency, patriotism, and individual self-sacrifice that is now
given to the work of war. It is because Germany learned this lesson three
centuries ago with reference to her forests and her waterways that she now
has a system of forests and waterways built by the hand of man and built
better than those of any other nation of the world.
This great work of safeguarding and defending the Mississippi Valley, the
Ohio Valley, and the Missouri Valley from flood invasion, if done by the
United States for those valleys, must, in the same way and to the same
extent, be done by the nation for all other flood-menaced valleys
throughout the country.
It necessitates working out, in coöperation with the States and local
municipalities and districts, a comprehensive and complete plan for water
conservation, and its highest possible utilization for all the beneficial
purposes to which water can be devoted.
It necessitates the preservation of the forests and woodland cover on the
watersheds, the reforestation of denuded areas, and the planting of new
forests on a thousand hillsides and mountains and on treeless plains where
none exist to-day.
It necessitates the building of model communities on irrigated lands
intensively cultivated, as object lessons, in a multitude of localities, to
demonstrate the value, for many beneficial uses, of the water which now
runs to waste in floods.
It necessitates the establishment and maintenance of a great system of
education to train the people in the intensive cultivation of land and the
use of water to produce food for mankind, and thereby transform an agency
of destruction into an agency of production on a stupendous scale.
It necessitates building and operating great reservoir systems, main line
canals, and engineering works, large and small, of every description that
have ever been built anywhere in the world for the control of water for
beneficial use, and to prevent floods and feed waterways.
To have an inland waterway system in the United States, in fact as well as
in name, necessitates building on all the rivers of this country such works
as have been built on every river in Germany, such works as the Grand Canal
of China, and such works as the English government has built or supervised
in India and Egypt, and is now planning to build to reclaim again for human
habitation the once populous but now desert and uninhabited plains of
Mesopotamia.
No argument ought to be needed to convince the people of the United States
that this great work of national defense against Nature's forces should
arouse the same patriotic inspiration and stimulate us to the same
superhuman effort and energy that we would put forth to prevent any section
of our country from being devastated by war. But if such an argument were
needed it is found in the condition of Mesopotamia to-day, as compared with
the days of Babylon's wealth and prosperity.
The people who dwelt on the Babylonian plains, and who made that empire
great and populous, sustained themselves by the irrigation of the desert.
The same processes of slow destruction which are now so evidently at work
over a large portion of our own country, gradually overcame and destroyed
the people of Mesopotamia. The floods finally destroyed the irrigation
systems. The desert triumphed over man. One of the most densely populated
regions of the earth became again a barren wilderness.
At the end of the Thirty Years' War Germany was a land wasted and
destroyed by war, but war had not destroyed the fertility of the soil.
Crops could still be raised in the fields, and trees could be planted on
the mountains that would grow into forests. All this was done, and modern
Germany rose out of the ruins of the Germany of three hundred years ago.
War had destroyed only the surface, leaving the latent fertility of the
land to be revived by indomitable human labor.
In Mesopotamia it was different. There the forces of Nature destroyed the
only means of getting food from the desert. Therefore the desert prevailed
and humanity migrated or became extinct. Will anyone question that the
defense of Mesopotamia against the desert should have aroused the same
intensity of patriotism among her people that has been aroused in past wars
for the defense of Germany, or as has been aroused for the defense of
Belgium and France and England in the present war?
Nature's processes of destruction work slowly but surely. In Mesopotamia
they have gone forward to the ultimate end. An entire people who once
constituted one of the greatest empires of the world have succumbed to and
been annihilated by the Desert.
Nature's forces have worked the same complete destruction in many other
places in Persia and Asia Minor, and on the eastern shores of the
Mediterranean.
Northern Africa was once a fertile and populous country. Its wooded
hillsides and timbered mountains gave birth to the streams by which it was
watered. It is another region of the earth that has been conquered by the
destroying forces of nature. The resources of vast areas of that country,
its power to sustain mankind, have been finally destroyed by those
blighting forces as completely as the city of Carthage was obliterated by
the Romans.
If the fertility of the lands of Northern Africa had been as indestructible
by Nature's forces as the fertility of the lands of Central Europe, a new
nation would have arisen in Northern Africa, nursed into being by that
indestructible fertility. Wherever the natural resources are destroyed the
human race becomes extinct.
A battle with an invading army may lead to temporary devastation. A battle
with the Desert, if the Desert triumphs, means the perpetual death of the
defeated nation.
_Which conflict should call for the greatest patriotic effort for national
defense?_
Patriotism exerted for the intelligent protection of any country from the
destruction of its basic natural resources, is aimed at a more enduring
achievement when it fights the destroying powers of Nature than when it
fights against a temporary devastation by an invading army.
The complete deforestation and denudation of the mountains of China and the
floods caused thereby resulted from the intensive individualism of her
people, and from their utter lack of any systematic organization of
governmental machinery to protect the resources of the country.
An organized system of forest preservation and flood protection, based upon
and springing from a spirit of patriotic service to the nation as a whole,
would have saved China from the destruction of resources of incalculable
value to her people, and it would have saved millions from death by
famine.
_Is death by war any worse than death by famine?_
The chief original causes of the great famines of China have been floods
which were preventable. In some of her largest valleys the floods have
resulted primarily from the denudation of the mountains and the destruction
of the woodland and forest cover on the watersheds of the rivers.
In "The Changing Chinese" by Prof. Edward A. Ross some vivid descriptions
will be found of the havoc wrought by deforestation and flood. Here is one
of the pictures he has drawn for us of Chinese conditions:
"On the Nowloon hills opposite Hong Kong there are
frightful evidences of erosion due to deforestation
several hundred years ago. The loose soil has been
washed away till the country is knobbed or blistered
with great granite boulders. North of the Gulf of
Tonkin I am told that not a tree is to be seen and the
surviving balks between the fields show that land once
cultivated has become waste. Erosion stripped the soil
down to the clay and the farmers had to abandon the
land. The denuded hill-slopes facing the West River
have been torn and gullied till the red earth glows
through the vegetation like blood. The coast hills of
Fokien have lost most of their soil and show little but
rocks. Fuel-gatherers constantly climb about them
grubbing up shrubs and pulling up the grass. No one
tries to grow trees unless he can live in their midst
and so prevent their being stolen. The higher ranges
further back have been stripped of their trees but not
of their soil for, owing to the greater rainfall they
receive, a verdant growth quickly springs up and
protects their flanks.
"Deep-gullied plateaus of the loess, guttered
hillsides, choked water-courses, silted-up bridges,
sterilized bottom lands, bankless wandering rivers,
dyked torrents that have built up their beds till they
meander at the level of the tree-tops, mountain brooks
as thick as pea soup, testify to the changes wrought
once the reckless ax has let loose the force of running
water to resculpture the landscape. No river could
drain the friable loess of Northwest China without
bringing down great quantities of soil that would raise
its bed and make it a menace in its lower, sluggish
course. But if the Yellow River is more and more
'China's Sorrow' as the centuries tick off, it is
because the rains run off the deforested slopes of its
drainage basin like water off the roof of a house and
in the wet season roll down terrible floods which burst
the immense and costly embankments, spread like a lake
over the plain, and drown whole populations."
We are following faithfully in the footsteps of China in our national
policy of non-action or grossly inadequate action. It is only a question of
time when we will suffer as they have suffered, unless we mend our ways,
and arouse our people to the spirit of patriotic service necessary, over
vast areas in the United States, to protect our mountains, forests,
valleys, and rivers from the fate of those in China.
The Chinese people, lacking in national patriotism, were overcome by the
invasion of barbaric hordes from the North, and were also overwhelmed by
the destroying powers of Nature. A national spirit of patriotism, bearing
fruit in national organization, would have protected them from both
disasters, as it actually did protect the Japanese. The Japanese have not
only successfully defended themselves against the aggressions of Russia. In
the same spirit of energetic and purposeful patriotism, they have
preserved and utilized to the highest possible extent the resources of
their country. They have defended Japan against the destructive forces of
Nature which have devastated China.
The hillsides and mountains of many sections of China are bared to the bone
of every vestige of forest or woodland cover. The floods have eroded the
mountains and filled the valleys with the débris. Torrential floods now
rage and destroy where perennial streams once flowed. In Japan, those
perennial streams still flow from every hillside and mountain, feeding the
myriad of canals with which her fertile fields are laced and interlaced.
The result is that on only 12,500,000 acres of intensively cultivated soil
Japan sustains a rural population of 30,000,000 people.
The power of Japan as a nation lies in the racial strength of her people.
That comes largely from the physical vigor and endurance developed by the
daily labor of the gardeners who till the soil. They have the land to
cultivate because the devotion of the people to the good of all has led
them to preserve their forests and water supplies. Where would they be
to-day if the same spirit of selfish individualism, and apathy and
indifference to the national welfare, and to the preservation of the
nation's resources, had dominated Japan, that has dominated China for
centuries, and that now dominates the United States of America?
In "The Valor of Ignorance," the author, Homer Lea, most truly says:
"No national ideals could be more antithetic than are
the ethical and civic ideals of Japan to those existent
in this Republic. One nation is a militant paternalism,
where aught that belongs to man is first for the use of
the State, the other an individualistic emporium where
aught that belongs to man is for sale. In one is the
complete subordination of the individual, in the other
his supremacy."
The author might with equal truth have added that from the standpoint of
the intrenched interests which control capital in the United States, and
undertake to control legislation, Humanity and Mother Earth exist only for
exploitation for private profit, and that the campaign to preserve and
perpetuate our natural resources and regulate our rivers and build
waterways and stop the ravages of Nature's devastating forces has not as
yet succeeded only because it proposes to put the general welfare above
speculation and exploitation.
This condition will continue until the mass of the people of the United
States have a great patriotic awakening and take hold of the duty of
perpetuating the country's natural resources, with the same patriotic
enthusiasm that they would fight a foreign invader.
Let us not deceive ourselves. The majority of the people of the United
States are as apathetic and indifferent to the great national questions
involved in the preservation of our forests and water supplies, and of the
fertility of our fields,--in the protection of our river valleys from
floods,--in the defense of the whole Western half of the United States
against the inroads of the desert,--in the protection of the mountain
ridges of the Eastern half of the United States from deforestation,--and
in the protection of our valleys from the fate which has befallen the
valleys of China, as were the Chinese through the long centuries during
which the grinding, destructive forces of Nature were devastating their
country and bringing famine and ruin to millions of the people.
Let us heed the lesson of China, and before it is too late enlist the
National Construction Reserve to combat this menace which threatens the
welfare of our people--grapple with floods in the lower valleys and with
floods in the mountain valleys; with forest fires and with forest
denudation; with blighting drouth and with desert sands.
Let us recognize that our first duty to ourselves and to our country is to
preserve the nation by preserving the resources within the nation, without
which the human race must perish from the surface of the earth.
Once this great fundamental need is recognized for protecting the nation's
resources and protecting the people by preserving the means whereby the
people live, a national system for bringing into action concerted human
effort and constructive energy will be organized.
It will be a system that will substitute for the patriotism, the
inspiration, and the victories of war a higher patriotism, a more splendid
inspiration, and a more glorious victory. That victory of peace which the
people of the United States will finally win will be a greater achievement
than anything which ever has or ever can be accomplished by warfare.
This nation can readily manufacture for itself, and store away in its
arsenals and warehouses, all the arms and equipment, all the munitions of
war that we would need to conduct a victorious war against any nation of
the world. It could train sufficient officers, without any increase of our
military expenditures, to lead an army large enough to successfully repel
any invasion that might ever be attempted in any part of the United States.
In the event of a foreign invasion, what would we need that we would not
have, _and could not get_, at least, _not quick enough to save ourselves
from a stupendous disaster_?
We would need and could not get _men_,--trained _men_,--men hardened and
inured to the demands of military service in the field. That is the one and
only thing we would lack. All the rest of the problem would be easy of
solution.
To undertake to enlist a militia of a million men in the United States
would not supply this need. The most vital of all the many elements of
weakness in militia, especially in this country to-day, would be the total
lack of physical stamina and hardihood in the men themselves. Of what use
are soldiers who can shoot, in these days of modern warfare, unless they
can also dig trenches and endure hardships which are to the ordinary man
impossible and inconceivable of being borne?
This necessity for men, _trained and hardened men_, men inured to the
hardships of military service, would be even greater in this country in the
event of a war than in any European country, because of the more primitive
condition of the country. Vast areas of the United States are uninhabited
and waterless. The climate varies from the intolerable heat, to those not
accustomed to it, of the southwestern deserts, to the freezing blizzards of
the North.
How are we to supply this need for men trained and toughened to every
hardship that must be borne by a soldier fighting under our flag in time of
war? The answer is, by enlisting them under the same flag to do the arduous
work of peace, which will harden them for the work of war, if they are ever
needed in that field of action.
How many of our people are there who realize the work that is being done
for Uncle Sam, every day in the year, by the few men who are giving
themselves, in a spirit of patriotism equal to that of any soldier, to the
field work of the Forest Service, to building forest fire trails, to
fighting forest fires. They give warning nowadays of a forest fire, as the
people of the Scottish border gave warning of an invasion in the Olden
days. When an invading force was coming up from the South a warning was
flashed across Scotland from the Solway to the Tweed with a line of
balefires that flamed into the night from the turrets of their castles. It
was a call to conflict. It put men on their mettle. So a call to fight a
forest fire is a call to conflict and puts men on their mettle for a combat
with the oncoming sweep of the devouring fire.
Would not the men who are inured to the work of making surveys across
rugged mountains, and to quarrying the rock, laying the stone, digging the
canals, and doing all the hard physical work that must be done by the men
who have built the great reservoirs and canals constructed by the
Reclamation Service, be toughened and hardened by it and fitted to dig
trenches in actual warfare, as they have been digging them in Belgium,
France, Prussia, and Poland?
For the hard and trying physical work of war there could be no better
training than to do the labor for which the Reclamation Service has paid
out millions of dollars in the last ten years.
The surveyors of the Land Department, the topographers of the Geological
Survey, the men in the field in every branch of Uncle Sam's service, who
are winning for this nation its greatest victories, the victories of peace,
are by that work physically developed into the very best and most efficient
type of strong and rugged manhood--the stuff of which soldiers must be
made.
As a nation we must recognize this all important fact, and avail ourselves
of it. We must build at least one branch of a Reserve that would constitute
an adequate organized system of national defense on this foundation:
That all government work shall be done by day's work and none by contract.
That every dollar that is paid out by Uncle Sam for the doing of
constructive government work, which could be temporarily suspended in time
of war, shall be paid to a man who had been regularly enlisted in a
Construction Reserve for the purpose of doing this work. That those men
shall be trained to do that work, and paid for doing it, exactly as though
no other object existed. And that every man so enlisted shall be liable
instantly to military service if the need should arise, by reason of our
country being involved in war with any other nation.
Every man employed in that service should be enlisted for a term of from
three to five years and trained in every way necessary to fit him to
perform the duties of a soldier and to endure the hardships of a soldier's
life in the event of war.
The Forest Service is now absurdly and pitifully inadequate to the needs of
the country. With the exception of small areas recently acquired in the
White Mountain and Appalachian regions, its work is chiefly in the western
half of the United States.
The work of the Forest Service should be enlarged to meet the needs of the
entire country. They should reforest every denuded mountain side, and plant
millions upon millions of acres of forests in every State in the United
States. That work should go on until in every State the matured forests are
ample to provide for all its needs for wood or timber.
The work of the Reclamation Service, instead of being confined to the West
only, should be extended to the entire United States. It should be made to
include reclamation by drainage and by protection from overflow just as it
now includes reclamation by irrigation. Irrigation systems should be
constructed and maintained for the purpose of demonstrating the value of
water to increase plant growth, not only in the arid regions, but in every
State, East as well as West.
Every acre reclaimed should bear the burden of the benefit it received from
the work of the national government and pay its proportion of the cost of
reclamation. The entire investment of the government should be repaid with
interest. The annual charge should include interest and a sinking fund that
would return the capital invested, with interest, within fifty years. The
original plan of the National Reclamation Act for a repayment in ten years
without interest was wrong. It placed an immediate burden on the settler
that was too heavy to be practicable. The Extension Amendment was likewise
wrong, because no provision was made for interest. The indebtedness should
have been capitalized at a very low rate of interest under some plan
similar to the British System in India. The future success of reclamation
work by the national government requires that the investment shall be
returned with interest.
In every State the works should be built, in coöperation with the States,
municipalities, and local districts, that are necessary to extend to the
people of every valley, from Maine to California, from Washington to
Florida, and from Montana to Texas, complete assurance of protection from
the flood menace in all years. The floods which have in the past brought
such appalling catastrophes upon whole valleys and communities, at a cost
of millions if not billions of dollars, should be harnessed and controlled
and turned from demons of destruction into food-producers and
commerce-carriers.
If Japan should land an army on the Pacific Coast would we leave it to
future generations to defend us against that invasion? It is equally
monstrous and wrong for this generation to leave to future generations the
building of the great works of defense necessary to check the invasion of
our valleys by disastrous floods, or the destruction of our forests by the
ravages of fire.
Whenever a forest fire breaks out anywhere, there should be an adequate
force of men enlisted in Uncle Sam's service for that purpose, to promptly
extinguish it. It is as wrong to leave such work wholly to local initiative
or action as it would be wrong to leave to the States the question of
national defense from possible attack by other nations. Coöperation with
the States there should always be, and this the States will willingly
extend. Of that we need have no fear. But the initiative must be taken, and
the basic plans made and furnished, by the national government. Otherwise
the work will never be done that is necessary to defend the nation against
Nature's invasions--against forest fires and floods, against drouth and
overflow, against denudation and erosion, and against the slow but
inexorable encroachments of the Desert in the arid region. The States will
not and cannot do it. It requires the overshadowing authority, initiative
and financial resources of the national government.
The Office of Public Roads of the national government should be made a
Service for _Construction_, like the Forest Service and the Reclamation
Service. Whatever the national government does to aid in the construction
of highways it should do by building them itself, whether they be built as
models, to stimulate local interest, or as object lessons to the States
through which they run, or as great national highways of travel, linking
the Atlantic to the Pacific and the Great Lakes to the Gulf in a continuous
system of roads as magnificent as those of ancient Rome. In time of war
they would be military highways. In time of peace they would be national
highways that would be traveled by multitudes of our people.
A Waterway Service for _Construction_ should be created, wholly separate
and apart from the War Department or any of its engineers or employees, to
build for this country as complete a system of waterways as now exists in
any of the countries of Europe--real waterways, waterways built to float
boats on and to carry inland commerce. Waterways must be built for commerce
and to constitute a national waterway system. The false pretense must stop
of spending money on waterways merely as a club to lower railroad rates.
That policy of indirection and sham has prompted the waste of too many
millions of dollars of the people's money in this country.
In this one great interrelated and interdependent work of forest and water
conservation, of reclaiming land by irrigation, drainage, and protection
from overflow, of regulating and developing the flow of rivers for power
development and navigation, and doing everything necessary for the
protection of every flood-menaced community and valley, enough men should
be enlisted in the different services through which the work is to be done,
to do this work with all the expedition required by the welfare of the
people at large of this generation.
This would necessitate the employment of an ultimate total of a million
men, scattered throughout every State of the Union. Every dollar paid to
them in wages, and every dollar expended in connection with their work,
would prevent devastation or create values for the nation immensely larger
than the total expenditure. The values created and benefits assured in time
of peace would alone justify the expenditure. The value to the nation of
such a great Reserve Force of trained and hardened men in time of war would
again justify the expenditure. But in the initial expenditure both ends
would be attained.
What we pay out from year to year for the support of our Standing Army and
our Navy, after each year has passed, is wasted and gone. It is too high a
rate to pay for insurance, which in fact is no insurance at all against a
possible war. If such a war should come, the Standing Army and the Navy
would be hopelessly inadequate for our protection.
The system must be changed. The Standing Army, without any increased
expenditure, must be made a training school for all the officers needed for
a Reserve of at least a million men. This should be done immediately! The
day is at hand when the nation must take time by the forelock and in time
of peace prepare for war, in a sane, intelligent, adequate, and effective
way. If it is not done we run the grave risk, with the possibility of war
always facing us, of being subjected by our national indifference to the
fearful cost of such a conflict if we were forced into it unprepared.
Shall we do this, and get back the full value of every dollar expended, or
shall we face the ever growing possibility of a war of one or two or three
years duration, costing us in cash outlay two or three billion dollars a
year?
It will be argued against this plan for an enlisted National Construction
Reserve that the men would have no military training in the event that the
need should instantly arise for utilizing them as soldiers. That objection
should be removed, by applying to the entire Construction Service, the
Swiss system of military training for a fixed period during each year, long
enough to train a man for the work of a soldier, but not long enough to
demoralize or ruin him as a man or as a citizen by the life of the barracks
or the camp.
The men enlisted in the Construction Service, and entirely under civil
control in all the work they would do for ten months of the year, could be
given military instruction during the remaining two months. That would not
bring upon the people of this country any of the evils that would result
from maintaining a standing army large enough to serve as an army of
defense in the event of a foreign invasion. And yet, with such a trained
Reserve Force already enlisted, the United States would be prepared to
instantly put into the field an army of trained and hardened soldiers. Its
Reserve Force would be so large that the mere existence of that force would
make this nation one of the strongest nations of the world in any military
contest. We might then rest assured that other nations would hesitate to
attack us or invade our territory. That possibility of danger would be
absolutely removed if the plan which will be later outlined for the
creation of a National Homecroft Reserve were adopted as an additional
means of national defense.
It will again be argued that we have no system of training officers for an
army of any such magnitude. This is quite true. It is an objection that
must be met and overcome. The War Department should be required to train
and provide these officers. The military posts on which such great sums
have been spent for political reasons, and so few of which are located
where they should be for real military reasons, should be turned into
military training schools for officers.
The rank and file of the regular army should be drawn from a class of men
who could be trained in those schools in all the necessary knowledge of
military science to qualify them to be officers. They might be private
soldiers in the regular army, and at the same time commissioned or
non-commissioned officers in the Reserve. A regular army of 50,000, if
established on a proper basis, would be able to supply officers for a
Reserve of 1,000,000 men.
Every private soldier in the regular army should be a man fit to become an
officer, and in process of training with that object in view. And when that
training had been completed, he should be assigned to his detail or his
command in the Reserve. A private soldier in time of peace in the regular
army, he would instantly become an officer in the Reserve in time of war.
The system should contemplate the retention in the government service, in
some constructive capacity, of every man once trained as an officer and
capable of rendering service as such in case of war. It is wrong to expect
such men to return to private life with a military string tied to them, and
take up the complicated duties of a commercial career, with the family
obligations that they ought to assume resting upon them, without providing
for the contingencies that a call for an immediate return to active service
would create.
Every soldier trained as an officer should be retained in the government
service, either civil or military, under conditions which would make it
possible for him to establish a family and a home, and at the same time be
certain that his family would suffer no privation if he were called to
active service in the event of war. This is not the place to work out the
details of such a plan, but it is entirely practicable. The details should
be worked out by the War Department.
If the people will provide a Reserve of enlisted men under civil control,
doing the work of peace in time of peace, and ready for the work of war in
time of war, it would be a confession of incompetence for the War
Department to question their capacity to train officers for this reserve.
Doubtless, however, some of the present regular army idols would have to be
shattered.
One of the most serious aspects of our unpreparedness for any military
conflict lies in the _incompleteness_ of the present system. As the author
of "The Valor of Ignorance" well says, we have no military system. We have
no means of training an adequate number of officers or holding them in
readiness for service during a long period of peace. Provision should be
made immediately for the War Department to train these officers.
The plan outlined would eliminate the element of weakness that would result
from an effort to utilize for national defense officers having no training
except that acquired in the State militia. In the plan advocated, every
officer needed for an army of a million men in the field would be ready at
any moment to step into the service and would have been trained in the work
by the military machine of which he would by that act become a part.
The army should be cut away entirely from all participation in the civil
affairs of the country, and should devote itself to its legitimate field of
getting ready for a possible war and fighting it for us if it should ever
come. Instead of blocking the way for the adoption of a comprehensive plan
for river regulation and flood protection throughout the country for fear
of interference with their existing privileges and authority, their work
should be concentrated on the field they are created to fill. That field is
the protection of the country from internal disturbance or external
invasion. The civil affairs of the country should be conducted through
organized machinery created for civil purposes, and not complicated with
the red tape and rule of thumb methods of the War Department. For this
work, initiative, constructive imagination and scientific genius must be
evoked, and these the Army has not. So long as they cling to this field of
work, just that long will progress be delayed, and the legitimate work of
the Army be neglected.
CHAPTER V
_The system of national defense for every nation must be adapted to the
conditions and needs of that nation. All nations are not alike. Each has
its distinct problems. The solution, in each case, must be fitted to the
nation and its people. There is no system now in operation in any other
country that could be fitted as a whole to the United States. A system must
be devised that will be applicable to the needs and conditions of this
country._
The Swiss system is ideal for Switzerland. A mountaineer is a soldier by
nature. Switzerland has a soldierly citizenry and can mobilize it instantly
as a citizen soldiery. The Swiss system would have fitted Belgium in spots,
but not as a whole. It is adapted to a rural people, who are individually
independent and self-sustaining, but not to a manufacturing community,
where the people cannot exist without the factory, or the factory without
the people.
It would be impracticable to adopt the Swiss system as a whole in the
United States. It would fit some communities but not others. Military
training would be beneficial to all boys, but our public school system is
controlled by the States, counties, and local districts, and not by the
nation. To adapt it to the Swiss system of universal military training in
the public schools will require a propaganda to educate public sentiment
that will necessitate years of patient work. A generation will pass before
we will be able to mobilize a force for national defense from Reservists
who will have received their military training in the public schools.
A system of national defense would fail of its purpose if it crippled the
industries of the country by depriving them of the labor necessary to their
operation. In the United States, one of the most urgent reasons for having
an automatically acting system of national defense perfectly organized in
advance and ready in case of emergency, is to insure the continuance of the
industries of the country without interruption, and to prevent any
industrial depression or interference with the prosperity of the country.
A system of national defense would fail of its purpose if it crippled
industries by drawing away their labor.
It would cause serious industrial derangement to mobilize an army of
citizen soldiers from men already enlisted in the ranks of labor in mill,
shop, factory, or mine. Besides that, the majority of them have families,
and live from hand to mouth with nothing between them and starvation but
the pay envelope Saturday night. The impracticability of recruiting
soldiers or mobilizing a reserve force from wage earners or clerical
employees with families dependent on their earnings for their living, must
always be borne in mind.
In Switzerland, the active, out-of-door life of the people makes the
majority of them rugged and vigorous. They have sturdy legs and strong
arms. They are sound, "wind, limb, and body." They are already inured to
the work of a soldier's life and its duties, any moment they may be called
to the colors.
In this country the life of the apartments, flats, and tenements, and the
frivolous, immoral, and deteriorating influences and evil environments of
congested cities, are sapping the vitality of our people, and rapidly
transforming them into a race of mental and physical weaklings and
degenerates. Even now the great majority of them utterly lack the physical
hardihood and vigor without which a soldier would not be worth the cost of
his arms and equipment.
It would overtax most city clerks and factory workers to walk to and from
the football or baseball games that constitute our chief national pastime.
About the only thing to which they are really inured is to sit on benches,
for hours at a time, and to yell, loud and long, to add zest to games that
are being played by others. It has been most truly said that "We are not a
nation of athletes, we are a nation of Rooters." Many of our devotees of
commercialized sport would perhaps be able to yell loud enough to scare the
enemy off in case of war, but they would not be able to march to the
battlefields where this soldierly aid might be required. A special
automobile service would have to be provided for their transportation.
Think of this the next time you see a howling mob of fans or rooters at a
baseball or football game, and "Lest we forget," think also of England's
lesson when she undertook to enlist soldiers from such a citizenry. Then
consider very seriously whether you don't think we had better in this
country create some communities of real men, like the Homecrofters of
Scotland. There are many rural neighborhoods in Scotland from which every
man of military age enlisted when the call came for soldiers to fight to
sustain Britain's Empire power in this last great war.
Do we want a citizen soldiery composed of such men as those who, since
1794, have served in the ranks of the Gordon Highlanders, or composed of
such men as the Gardeners of Japan, who wrested Port Arthur from the
Russians, or do we want to depend on a national militia of citizen soldiers
enrolled from among the pink-cheeked dudelets and mush-faced weaklings from
the apartments, flats, and tenements of our congested cities or factory
towns, whose highest ambition is to smoke cigarettes, ape a fashion plate,
or stand and gape at a baseball score on a bulletin board? They like that
sort of sport, because they can enjoy it standing still. It necessitates no
physical exertion. If they could ever be induced to enlist as soldiers,
their feet would be too sore to walk any farther, before they had marched
forty miles. A day's work with a shovel, digging a trench, would send most
of them to the hospital with strained muscles and lame backs. And yet,
trench-digging seems to be the most important part of a soldier's duty in
these days of civilized warfare, when the machinery for murder by wholesale
has been so splendidly perfected.
If we are going to have a citizen soldiery in this country, the first thing
we had better set about is to produce a soldierly citizenry--a race of men
with the physical vigor of the Swiss Mountaineers, or of the men who
founded our own nation, who fought the battles of the Revolution, who dyed
with their red blood the white snows of Valley Forge, who marched through
floods and floating ice up to their armpits to the capture of Fort
Vincennes, who floated down the Ohio River on rafts or walked down the
Wilderness Road with Boone, who fought Indians, broke prairie, traversed
the waterless deserts, and conquered the wilderness from the crest of the
Alleghenies to the shores of the Pacific, sustained by the strong women who
stood by their sides and shared their hardships.
The weakness of the United States as a nation to-day, a weakness much more
deeply rooted than mere military unpreparedness, lies in the fact that as a
nation we have no national ideals that rise above commercialism, no
national ambitions beyond making or controlling money, which the devotees
of Mammon delight to call "Practicing the Arts of Peace."
Manhood and womanhood are being utterly sacrificed to mere money-making.
National wealth is calculated in units of dollars, and not in units of
citizenship. To accumulate wealth is the controlling ambition of our
people, and not to perpetuate the strong racial type from which we are all
descended.
Not only is the original sturdy American Anglo-Saxon stock being
degenerated, but we are bringing to our shores millions of the strong and
vigorous races from Southern and Eastern Europe, and crowding them into
tenements and slums to rot, both physically and mentally. That cancer is
eating away the heart and corrupting the very lifeblood of this nation.
Those conditions would soon be changed if the mass of our people, and
particularly Organized Capital and Organized Labor, would place Humanity
above Money.
Capital thinks only of Dividends. Labor thinks only of Wages. Neither gives
the slightest heed to making this a nation of Rural Homes and thereby
perpetuating the racial strength and virility of the people of the nation.
That can only be done by providing a right life environment for all
wageworkers and their families, particularly the children. A home for a
family is not entitled to be called a home, unless it is both an
individual home and a garden home. It must be a Homecroft--a home with an
abundance of sunshine and fresh air, in decent, sanitary surroundings--a
home with a piece of ground about it from which in time of stress or
unemployment the family can get its living by its labor, and thereby enjoy
economic independence.
Industry will destroy humanity unless a national system of life is
universally adopted that will prevent racial deterioration. The only way
that can be done is by a nation-wide abandonment of the artificial and
degenerate life of the congested cities. The people must be educated and
trained so that they will desert the flats and tenements as rats would
abandon a sinking ship.
Our first great national undertaking should be the creation of a national
system of life that will realize the ideals of the Homecroft Slogan:
"Every Child in a Garden,
Every Mother in a Homecroft, and
Individual Industrial Independence
For every worker in a
Home of his own on the Land."
Unless the united power of the people as a whole is soon put forth to check
the physical and racial deterioration now going on at such an appalling
rate among the masses of our wageworkers,--the result of the wrong
conditions that surround their lives,--nothing can prevent the eventual
ruin of this nation. We are already on the downward course along which Rome
swept to the abyss of human degeneracy in which she was at last destroyed
by the same causes that are so widely at work in this country to-day.
Employers of Labor are most directly responsible for these evil conditions.
They cannot shirk that responsibility. They cannot evade the fact that the
menace against which we most need national defense arises from the
degeneracy that we are breeding in our midst. If we cannot do both, we had
far better spend our national energies and revenues in fighting the evils
that are rotting our citizenship, than in building forts and fortifications
or maintaining a navy and an army for defense against the remote
possibility of attacks by other nations.
We hear much of the danger to New York from such an attack. New York is in
far greater danger from the criminal, immoral, evil, and degenerating
forces that she is nursing in her own bosom than she is from any military
force that might be landed on our shores by a foreign invader. The enemies
she has most to fear are her own Gunmen and Bomb-throwers; Black-handers
and White-Slavers; Apaches, Dope Fiends, Gamblers, and Gangsters; Tenement
House Landlords; Out-of-Works, and all the breeders of poverty, crime,
insanity, disease, and human misery that are rampant in her midst,--the
direct result of the system of industry and human life which she has
herself created and for which she alone is responsible.
This is no overdrawn picture. It is only the briefest possible outline of
the evil conditions which less than a century of the Service of Mammon has
bred in that mighty metropolis. Everyone who reads the newspapers which
reflect the daily events of New York City will appreciate how impossible it
is to portray in words the depth of degradation to which a great mass of
humanity has sunk in that modern Babylon--rich as well as poor.
The invasion that New York City should most fear, that of Vice and Crime
and Degeneracy, has been accomplished. They have captured the outer
fortifications and are intrenched within the citadel. The Goths are not
_at_ the gates,--they are _within_ the gates.
Uncle Sam has transformed the wild Apaches of the Southwest into steady and
industrious laborers who have done yeoman work with the Construction Corps
of the Reclamation Service in Arizona. New York is now breeding, in her
modern canyons and cliff dwellings, a more bloodthirsty, cruel, and
treacherous race of Apaches than were ever bred amid the mountain
fastnesses and forbidding deserts of the Southwest.
Do not these domestic enemies constitute a more immediate danger than any
foreign enemy?
The foreign enemy, with whose invasion the Militarists so delight to harrow
our imaginations, is still in the remote distance--a future possibility,
not even a probability on the Atlantic seacoast.
_The greatest merit of the plan for national defense advocated in this book
is that it will safeguard against danger from these domestic enemies, who
are already in our midst, at the same time that it will safeguard, in the
only adequate way yet proposed, against war or any possibility of a foreign
invasion._
Many see the danger of a social or political cataclysm resulting from the
saturnalia of degeneracy, disease, and crime that is being bred by tenement
life and congested cities. Unfortunately they see no remedy for it but a
stronger central government and a bigger standing army.
This desire for a standing army to protect against internal social or
industrial disturbance leads to enthusiastic advocacy, on any pretext
whatever, for a bigger army and navy whenever opportunity is presented. If
the truth were known, the majority of those who so vigorously advocate a
bigger and still bigger army and navy, are prompted by fear of an enemy in
our midst, arising from human degeneracy in cities or from social or labor
conflicts, more than by any danger of conflict with another nation.
The men who have built our great congested cities have undermined the
pillars of the temple of our national strength and safety. Now they want
protection from the consequences of their own work, which they so justly
fear. They want this nation to adopt the Roman System, which finally worked
Rome's destruction. They want soldiers hired to protect them because they
fear the consequences of the things they have done, just to make money, and
they cannot protect themselves from the dangers their own greed for wealth,
at any cost to humanity, has created.
The inevitable result of the establishment of such a system of national
defense as they advocate would be a military oligarchy. Combined with our
present money oligarchy, it would be politically invincible. In some great
internal crisis or social and political disturbance, all power would be
centralized and our government would be transformed into a military
autocracy. From that time on we would follow in the footsteps of Rome to
our certain doom as a people and a nation.
It is a curious fact that this desire for protection from internal
disturbance by a hired standing army comes from the very class in the
United States which was, at the last, in Rome, ground between the upper and
the nether millstones--between the army above and the proletariat below--in
the final working out of the Roman System. The proscriptions of the Roman
Emperors, to propitiate their armies, are forgotten by the modern
patricians who clamor for a large standing army.
The patrician class in this country, who are now in their hearts praying
for a strong centralized military government,--patiently and persistently
planning for it, and making steady progress, too,--are the very class whose
estates were confiscated, and their owners proscribed and executed by
thousands to enable the Roman Emperors to appropriate their wealth and from
that source satisfy the demands of the Army. The Army had to be rewarded
for their services in conferring the purple on the Emperor, which they did
by virtue of their military control of the government. It was the Army who
made and unmade Emperors. The Emperors bought the Army with money and
bribed the populace with feasts and games. The money to do both was
obtained by the proscription and plunder of the wealthy patricians, the
same class which in our time is now trying so hard to establish a gilded
caste in New York and other great centers of wealth and a strong military
government for this nation.
Whatever system of national defense is to be adopted in the United States,
it must be a system in which the people themselves, as citizens and not as
professional soldiers, furnish the human material for national defense. The
people must control our army of citizen soldiery so absolutely that it can
never be turned against their personal liberties or property rights. Let us
heed the warning of Rome. It is none too soon. Let us beware of either
confiscation or proscription as an evolution from a military government to
a military despotism.
Switzerland alone, of all the civilized nations, and the smallest of them
all, stands to-day a living demonstration of the National Spirit and the
National System of Universal Service to their Country that should be
adopted by all the nations of the world, to the fullest extent that it can
be made applicable to their conditions. The Swiss System provides adequate
national defense by the entire citizenship of the nation. Any subversion of
the people's liberties through the power of the Army is impossible because
the people themselves constitute the Army.
Australia has already adopted the Swiss System, substantially, and in
consequence will escape the danger of military domination which will fasten
itself on this country if our system of national defense is to consist only
of a steadily increasing standing army. If we are to escape that danger we
must never lose sight of the chief merit of the Swiss System, which is that
every citizen participates in it and is affected by it, and we must as
nearly as possible adapt it to the conditions existing in this country.
There are many lessons that we might learn from the Swiss to our great
national advantage.
If the Spirit of Switzerland, the self-reliant independence of her people,
and their physical and mental vigor, individually and collectively, her
national motto "All for each and each for all," dominated a nation of
100,000,000 people, like the United States, with an area of 2,973,890
square miles, exclusive of Alaska, as it does a nation of something less
than 4,000,000 people, with an area of only 15,976 square miles, that
Spirit and that System of national defense would soon become the universal
system of the world.
The most dangerous military system for any nation, large or small, is a
standing army large enough to invite attack, but not strong enough to repel
it. That was the system of Belgium, and to that fact is due the destruction
of Belgium. It is the present system of the United States. The most
striking feature of our unpreparedness for war is the fact that it would be
hopelessly impossible to defend ourselves against invasion without an army
so huge as to dwarf our present army into insignificance.
The Swiss System is the best for Switzerland and is no doubt the best for
Australia, but when adapting it, so far as may be practicable, to the
conditions existing in the United States, we must not fall into the error
of assuming that numerical strength is the only thing necessary in
calculating the strength of an army. Soldiers alone are not all that a
nation needs for defense, no matter how well they may be trained and
equipped, or drilled and officered, or supplemented by naval strength or
fortifications. The foundations on which national defense must be built are
social, economic, and human. The question involves every element of the
problem of preserving and perpetuating even-handed justice to all, social
stability, economic strength and independence, a patriotic citizenship, and
a rugged, stalwart, and virile race.
The population of Switzerland is less than that of the city of London, but
if London were a nation by itself, with its congested population, human
degeneration, artificial life, moral decay, and economic dependence, it
would be impossible of defense from a military point of view.
Just exactly in the proportion that the United States gathers its
population into great cities, does it court the same elements of weakness,
but with this practical difference. London, being a part of the British
Empire, is safeguarded by the whole civil and military power of that
nation. Our great seaboard cities, being a part of the United States, are
practically defenseless, because our people have no system or policy of
national defense. Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, Boston, New
York, and Philadelphia, in the event of an attack by the invading military
forces of any of the Great Powers, would be surrendered just as Brussels
and Antwerp were surrendered, to save them from destruction, if for no
other reason.
CHAPTER VI
_The most serious menace to the future peace of this country arises not so
much from the possibility of a sudden invasion in time of war by some
foreign nation, as from the danger of racial conflict resulting from the
slow, steadily increasing invasion of an Asiatic people in time of peace.
Year after year they are coming in thousands to make their homes within the
territory of the United States._
No one who has watched the steady increase of Japanese population in Hawaii
and in our Pacific Coast States can fail to realize this danger. It is a
danger that is already threatening us. It exists to-day, and will continue
to exist every day in the future. It cannot be pushed aside. We cannot
remove it by ignoring it.
Some unexpected incident may at any time start excitement and cause an
explosion that would precipitate a national conflict. In such an event
either Japan or the United States might be forced into war by an
irresistible upheaval of public sentiment. We had that experience in the
case of the blowing up of the Maine. We must not ignore the possibility
that some such moving cause for war might again occur, and start a flame
against which the governments and the Peace Advocates of both nations would
be powerless.
It is unfortunate that the people of the United States generally have no
appreciation of these facts, and give no thought to safeguarding against
them. Their consideration should be approached with the most perfect
friendliness and good feeling, nationally and individually, so far as the
Japanese are concerned. Instead of antagonizing the Japanese, we should
cultivate their good will. There is no nation on the earth--no other race
of people--who more richly _deserve and merit the good will of other
nations_.
Those of the Japanese who come among us should be conceded to have come
with the most pacific intentions. They come from an overcrowded country to
one that is sparsely inhabited--a country that is to them a Land of
Promise--a Land flowing with milk and honey--another Garden of Eden. All
the majority of them want is so much of it as they can cultivate with their
own labor. To their minds that means both comfort and a competence. They
are poor and they long to be rich. Do they differ from us in that?
They come to the Pacific Coast for the same reasons that the early settlers
went into the great West and endured so many hardships to get homes on the
land. They are impelled by the same desire to find the Golden Fleece that
started the migration of the Pioneers of Forty-Nine. But the Japanese are
coming to dig the gold out of gardens and orchards and vineyards, instead
of from the placer mines.
The average American who has much land on the Pacific Coast wants a tenant.
The average Japanese wants only a hoe with which to till the land. Give him
the land and the hoe and he will do the rest. He does not want to hire
somebody to do the work for him or to find somebody who will pay him for
the privilege of doing it.
The Caucasian cultivators of the soil, where there are such, cannot stand
against the competition of either the Chinese or the Japanese. The danger
of racial controversy results from this economic competition. It is a
struggle for the survival of the fittest. The Japanese is the strongest in
that struggle. The Caucasian must succumb or fall back on his government
for protection. In the case of the Chinese this controversy bred bitter
strife. In the case of the Japanese it is liable at any moment to cause
serious international controversy.
That danger will continue until we put a population on every acre of the
rich and fertile land on the Pacific Coast. On every such acre there must
be an occupant who will till the land himself--not a mere owner looking for
a tenant.
The Japanese know the value of water as well as the value of land. Every
cultivated acre in Japan is an irrigated acre. If we are to safeguard
against the menace of conflict with Japan we must not only ourselves
populate and cultivate the land that the Japanese covet, but we must
conserve and use the water as well. We must do with the country what the
Japanese people would do with it if it were theirs. So long as it remains,
from their point of view, unoccupied and unused, they will covet it, and in
the end they will possess it, unless we use and possess it ourselves in
advance of them.
Look at California!
In the great central valley of that State, including the foothill country,
there are 12,500,000 acres of the richest land in the world. The water with
which to irrigate every unirrigated acre of it runs to waste year after
year. Every acre of it could be irrigated. Every acre of it would support a
family. It is so sparsely settled that to the Japanese mind it is vacant
and unoccupied. The greater part of it is to-day unreclaimed. Some of it is
producing grain or hay. The rest is pasture--grazing ground for herds of
live stock where there should be gardens intensively cultivated and homes
forming closely settled communities.
In Japan, on 12,500,000 acres, the same area as in California and no
better land, they have evolved a population of expert gardeners and their
families of 30,000,000 rural people. There is not land enough in Japan to
give back a comfortable living as the reward for their labor. The great
mass of the farming people--really they are not farmers--they are
gardeners--are very poor. California holds out to them a chance for every
family to become rich from their point of view. Should we wonder that they
come to California?
The constant pressure of the population in Japan to overflow will make a
corresponding inflowing pressure upon California. It is like the pressure
of air upon a vacuum. The way to relieve the pressure is to fill the
vacuum. California is the vacuum. Fill it with people of the Caucasian race
who will till the soil they own with their own hands, and the pressure upon
this California vacuum from Asiatic peoples will cease.
If California's garden lands were as densely populated as Belgium was
before the war, there would be no Japanese danger-zone, provided the
California cultivators of the soil tilled their own acres, or acre, as the
Japanese do in their own country and want to do in California.
It would be necessary, in order to settle the Sacramento and San Joaquin
Valleys of California in that way, to use for the irrigation of the San
Joaquin Valley, all the flood water now wasted in the Sacramento Valley.
That can be done. There is no question about it whatever. The first
recommendation to do it was made by a Commission of eminent engineers
appointed by General Grant, when President, to report on the irrigation of
the San Joaquin Valley.
It would require large and comprehensive planning, and the coöperation of
the State and the nation. But had not the nation better spend millions to
populate the country the Japanese covet, than to spend millions to fight a
war with them to keep them out of it. Is it not better to settle the
country, and in that way settle the controversy, than to run the risk of
losing all the precious lives and treasure that a war would cost, and the
risk of having California devastated by that war in the same way that
Belgium has been destroyed?
Ought not that awful possibility to be enough to awaken the people of the
United States to the necessity of doing something, and doing it quick, _to
populate the Pacific Coast_?
If anyone doubts that the Japanese are gaining a firm foothold in our
territory, and a foothold that is steadily growing stronger year by year,
they will be convinced by the mere statement of the facts as to the
Japanese influx into the United States.
The facts relating to that influx and the menace it holds for this country
in the event of a war with Japan, are dispassionately set forth in "The
Valor of Ignorance," by Homer Lea, published in 1909. The author was a
Californian, but had lived many years in the Orient. He had studied it
deeply and thoroughly understood his subject.
In his book he calls attention to the fact that the Japanese population in
Hawaii increased from 116 in 1884 to 22,329 in 1896; and from 22,329 in
1896 to 61,115 in 1909.
Then he gives us these facts:
"Japanese immigration into the Hawaiian Islands, from
1900 to 1908, has been 65,708. The departures during
this period were 42,313. The military unfit have in
this manner been supplanted by the veterans of a great
war, and the military occupation of Hawaii tentatively
accomplished.
"In these islands at the present time the number of
Japanese who have completed their active term of
service in the Imperial armies, a part of whom are
veterans of the Russian War, exceeds the entire field
army of the United States."
Of more startling importance are the facts with reference to Japanese
immigration to the mainland territory of the United States, which are given
in the same volume as follows:
Immigration by political periods:
1891-1900 24,806
1901-1905 64,102
1905-1906 14,243
1906-1907 30,226
------
Total 133,377
During the last six years there have come to the United
States (Report of Bureau of Immigration) 90,123
Japanese male adults.
In California the Japanese constitute more than
one-seventh of the male adults of military age:
Caucasian males of military age 262,694
Japanese males of military age 45,725
In Washington the Japanese constitute nearly one-ninth
of the male population of military age:
Caucasian males of military age 163,682
Japanese males of military age 17,000
The foregoing rapidly increasing tide of Asiatic immigration forced
attention to the subject, and in 1908 the Japanese government agreed
voluntarily with the United States that in future passports should not be
issued by the Japanese government to laborers desiring to emigrate from
Japan to the United States. This temporarily checked this class of
immigration and in the year ending June 30, 1908, the total immigration
fell to 16,418; the year ending June 30, 1909, to 3,275; the year ending
June 30, 1910, to 2,798.
But note the steady increase since then! Year ending June 30, 1911, 4,575;
year ending June 30, 1912, 6,172; year ending June 30, 1913, 8,302; year
ending June 30, 1914, 8,941.
These figures, however, give no adequate conception of the actual facts, as
they have developed in California during the last ten years in such a way
as to stimulate racial controversy. Some of the most beautiful and
productive sections of the fruit-growing regions of California have been
entirely absorbed by Japanese. Caucasian communities have become Japanese
communities. Such a transformation is certainly not one that is calculated
to allay racial controversy.
The alien land law of California will not allay racial controversy--it will
intensify it. Japan has protested against it, as she protested against our
acquisition of Hawaii, and there has been no withdrawal of her protests.
The Japanese government has shown a disposition to mitigate the danger of
controversy by limiting the emigration of Japanese to this country, but
that government can not control her people after they come to this country.
If they cannot buy land they will lease it. That leads to all the trouble
indicated in the following newspaper item:
"Tacoma, Wash., Jan. 5 (1915).--The Tacoma delegation
to the legislature, which will meet on January 11, has
been notified that a bill will be introduced for a
State referendum on a law to prevent leasing of
Washington land to Asiatics. Many members of the
legislature are pledged to support the measure.
"Japanese gardeners, it is contended, are increasing in
numbers, getting the best land about the cities under
lease, and some of them lease land for 99 years or have
a trustee buy it for them. Many Japanese marry 'picture
brides' and later have their leases of titles
transferred to their infant sons and daughters born
here.
"An amendment submitted in November permitting aliens
to own land in cities was overwhelmingly defeated."
There is very little doubt that the majority of the Japanese on the Pacific
Coast are soldiers, veterans of the Japanese wars, and that in case of war
Japan could mobilize on our territory between the Pacific Ocean and the
inaccessible mountains constituting the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Ranges,
more Japanese soldiers who are right now in that territory than we have
United States troops in the whole mainland territory of the United States,
or will have when our army is enlisted up to its full strength of 100,000
men.
The figures given in "The Valor of Ignorance" show that in 1907 there were
62,725 Japanese of military age in the States of Washington and California.
Since then, up to June 30, 1914, the Japanese immigration has been 50,481,
and nearly all of those who come are men of military age. So that now we
have no doubt more trained Japanese soldiers in California, Oregon and
Washington, than our entire standing army if it were enlisted to its full
quota of 100,000 men, including every soldier we have, wherever he may be
stationed.
And at the rate they are now coming, in ten years we will have more than
our entire standing army would then be if we increased it to 200,000, as
the Militarists urge should be done.
_What are we going to do about it?_
That is the question that stares every citizen of the United States
straight in the face.
It may be that all cannot be brought to agree as to what ought to be done,
but certainly all must agree that something should be done, and it is
equally certain that neither an Exclusion Law, nor an Alien Land Law, nor
an Alien Leasing Law, will settle the question, or relieve the strain of
racial competition that is certain, unless obviated, to eventually breed an
armed conflict with Japan.
The same author who has been previously quoted, referring to the Philippine
Islands, says:
"The conquest of these islands by Japan will be less of
a military undertaking than was the seizure of Cuba by
the United States; for while Santiago de Cuba did not
fall until nearly three months after the declaration of
war, Manila will be forced to surrender in less than
three weeks. Otherwise the occupation of Cuba portrays
with reasonable exactitude the manner in which the
Philippines will be taken over by Japan."
Since this was written the events of the present war have still further
strengthened the Japanese power in the Pacific. First China, then Russia,
and now Germany have been eliminated. To complacently assume that Japan
will never have occasion to cross swords with the United States, is surely
a most mistaken attitude for the people of this country to delude
themselves with. It is contrary to every dictate of common sense and
reason, when the people of the Pacific Coast are forced for their own
protection to enact legislation which Japan interprets as a violation of
her treaty rights. The average run of people in other States give no
thought to the matter. They say, "Yes, California has her problem with the
Japs." It is not California's problem. It is the problem of the United
States.
And in calling attention to the practical impossibility of defending the
Pacific Coast against Japanese invasion and occupation in the event of war,
the author heretofore quoted from calls attention to the following facts,
among others, showing our unpreparedness and the complete inadequacy of our
defenses:
"The short period of time within which Japan is able to
transport her armies to this continent--200,000 men in
four weeks, a half million in four months, and more
than a million in ten months--necessitates in this
Republic a corresponding degree of preparedness and
rapidity of mobilization.
"Within one month after the declaration of war this
Republic must place, in each of the three defensive
spheres of the Pacific Coast, armies that are capable
of giving battle to the maximum number of troops that
Japan can transport in a single voyage. This is known
to be in excess of 200,000 men.... We have called
attention to the brevity of modern wars in general and
naval movements in particular; how within a few weeks
after war is declared, concurrent with the seizure of
the Philippines, Hawaii, and Alaska, will the conquest
of Washington and Oregon be consummated. In the same
manner within three months after hostilities have been
begun there, armies will land upon the seaboard of
Southern California.... No force can be placed on the
seaboard of Southern California either within three
months or nine months that would delay the advance of
the Japanese armies a single day.
"The maximum force that can be mobilized in the
Republic immediately following a declaration of war is
less than 100,000 men, of whom two-thirds are militia.
This force, made up of more than forty miniature
armies, is scattered, each under separate military and
civil jurisdiction, over the entire nation. By the time
these heterogeneous elements are gathered together,
organized into proper military units, and made ready
for transportation to the front, the States of
Washington and Oregon will have been invaded and their
conquest made complete by a vastly superior force....
So long as the existent military system continues in
the Republic there can be no adequate defense of any
single portion of the Pacific Coast within a year after
a declaration of war, nor the three spheres within as
many years."
Apparently neither the Militarists, nor the Passivists, nor the
Pacificists, nor the Pacificators, ever give any thought or heed to the
fact of danger from within as the result of a steadily growing alien
population, permanently settled in the United States, and which would in
the event of war constitute a force larger than any army we would have
available for defense.
The chief danger of an armed conflict with Japan arises from the existence
in our midst of this alien population, and the danger that the pressure of
their competition may breed strife similar to that which preceded the
Chinese Exclusion Act, a situation which can never be applied to Japan
without creating a certainty of war immediately or in the future.
In this respect we are like a people living on the slopes below the crater
of a volcano. We can never know when an eruption may take place or what its
extent or consequences may be. All we do know is that the danger exists;
and it is folly beyond the possibility of expression or description to
ignore that fact, and perpetuate our national indifference and
unpreparedness. It is this situation on the Pacific Coast, more than any
other one thing, which makes the advocacy of disarmament for this nation so
inconceivably dangerous unless Japan and China should also disarm, which we
may rest assured they will never do. China is just entering upon a new era
of militarism under a Military Dictator whose policy will be for arms and
armament.
If the disarmament of the United States were to be agreed to and carried
out because other nations agreed to disarm, and Japan and China were
willing to disarm, then the disarmament of Asiatic nations would have to
be coupled with the further safeguard of an agreement stopping emigration
from Asia to America--not only to North America, but to South America as
well. It is not proposed by any of the advocates of disarmament to stop
such immigration, nor will it be stopped. The fact that it will continue
indefinitely through the years of the future is a fact which must be
recognized as fundamental in dealing with the question of national defense
for the United States of America.
The economic conditions created by the Asiatic in America are more
dangerous and difficult of adjustment than any problem resulting from the
military or naval strength of any Asiatic nation so long as their people in
times of peace will stay in Asia. But they will not stay in Asia of their
own accord, and they will not be forced to do so. We must face not only the
problems that will arise from a large Asiatic population on the Pacific
Coast of the United States, but in South America, Central America, and
Mexico.
In a few generations the Japanese will control the northern Pacific shores
of South America. Peru will come to be in reality a Japanese country. The
Japanese will control because they will be in a majority, just as they now
constitute a majority of the population of Hawaii. They will dominate the
Indian population and will absorb or supplant the Spanish just as we have
done in California. In the course of time the Japanese will control Mexico
in the same way, unless we control it ourselves.
It does not follow that we could not live at peace with the Japanese, if
they controlled South America and Mexico, as we now live at peace with them
when they only control Japan, Formosa, Sakhalin, Korea, and their sphere of
influence in Manchuria, as well as Tsing Tau and their Pacific Islands.
But if we are to do so, it can only be done by meeting their economic
competition and establishing within our own territory a system of physical
and mental development, a social and economic system, and a system of
military defense, that will not only be equal but superior to theirs.
The conflict between the races of Asia and the races of America is the
age-old competition to test which is the stronger race. The fittest will
survive. We cannot defend ourselves by temporary exclusion, as we have
tried to do with the Chinese. It is only a question of time when China will
emerge from the slumber of the centuries and provide herself with all the
implements of modern warfare necessary to insist upon the same treatment
for her people that we accord to other nations.
It may be a long time before an armed conflict between the United States
and Japan is precipitated, but it is inevitable, unless the national policy
advocated in this book is adopted. War between this country and Japan
within the next forty years, unless the present trend is checked, is as
inevitable as it has been at all times during the last forty years between
France and Germany, with this difference:
The present European war is the result of primary causes that were so
deeply rooted in wrong and injustice, that no human power could eradicate
them. It is different with Japan. We have no long standing or deeply rooted
controversy with Japan and we need never have if we meet the economic
problem involved in this great racial competition between Asia and America.
It is coming upon us, however, with the slow moving certainty of a glacier,
and meet it we must. We must prevail or be overwhelmed, and unless we can
face the economic conflicts involved and triumph in them, it is useless for
us to undertake to hold our ground by militarism alone.
The fact undoubtedly is that of all three of the plans now before the
people of the United States for national defense or for preserving peace,
the most dangerous and deceptive is that of the militarists, for a bigger
standing army and a bigger navy. It would create a false and misleading
feeling of security from danger which would becloud the real problems
involved and make their solution more difficult, if not impossible.
Japan to-day has the most efficient military system of any nation of the
world. This statement refers to the _system_. Other nations may have larger
armies, but Japan's military system, like that of Switzerland, is fitted
into and matches with her whole social, commercial, and economic system. It
is a part of the very fiber of her national being, and not an excrescence,
as is our standing army.
And behind this she has the most adaptable, industrious, and physically and
mentally efficient and vigorous people of the world. The danger of war
between the United States and Japan is not so much a present as a future
danger. Whether it is in the near future or the far future depends largely
on accident.
The danger could be removed entirely if the American people would
substitute intelligent study of the problem for bumptious conceit, and
concerted action on right lines for aimless talk. Unless we do that our
ultimate fate is as inevitable as that of Rome when she vainly strove by
militarism alone to protect a decadent nation against the onslaughts of
virile races. Our fate will not be so long delayed because we are now
crowding into a decade the events that once evolved slowly through a
century. We may reach in forty years a condition of relative weakness as
against opposing forces which Rome reached only after four hundred years.
There will never be a war between Japan and the United States if the people
of this country will do unto the Japanese in all things as we would desire
the Japanese to do unto us, if our situations were reversed, and they
occupied this country and we theirs, _provided always_, that we at the same
time recognize that the Japanese are the stronger rather than the weaker
race, and cannot be exploited or their labor permanently appropriated for
our profit rather than theirs; and _provided further_, that we recognize
that Japan is enormously overpopulated; that her population, which has
grown from only four or five million in the tenth century to over fifty
million in the twentieth, is increasing at the rate of over 1,000,000 a
year, and that _the hive must swarm_.
This necessity sets forces in motion that are as irresistible in their
workings as the laws that control the universe and direct the stars in
their courses. Whenever race meets race in such a fundamental struggle for
existence, the law of the survival of the fittest is inexorable. As Japan
increases her population, she becomes stronger, because wherever her people
go they root themselves to the soil. As we increase our population, we
become weaker, because we steadily enlarge the proportion of our population
that we crowd into congested cities where it _rots_.
The poison of an Industrial System resting upon a system of life that
destroys Humanity is filtering into the Japanese body politic, but before
it seriously degenerates their racial strength the Japanese will see its
evil effects on the State, and remove the cause.
We see its evil effects on the State, but seem unable to shake off the grip
of Commercialism which is responsible for it. We will never shake off that
grip until we can rise to the higher level of patriotism which will
subordinate Commerce and Industry to the welfare of Humanity.
Unless we are willing to accept, as the inevitable end of our civilization,
the fate of all the Ancient Civilizations, we must remember that no nation
can endure in which one class is exploited for the benefit of another. The
same rule applies inexorably to any attempt by the people of one country to
exploit the people of another and live on their labor.
If an armed conflict should be precipitated in the near future between this
country and Japan it will grow out of racial controversies resulting from
an effort to exploit the Japanese in the United States in the same way that
we are exploiting the immigrants from European countries. The difficulty
that now faces the people of the United States with reference to the
Japanese problem arises from the fact that we can neither exploit, nor
exclude, nor assimilate the Japanese, nor can we, under present conditions,
survive their economic competition within our own territory.
Let the question of exploitation be first considered. There is a strong
contingent of Americans on the Pacific Coast who openly advocate Japanese
immigration. They argue that our proud and superior race will not
condescend to do the "_squat labor_," as they term it, that is necessary to
get the gold from the gardens of California--and from her vast plantations
of potatoes, vegetables, and other food products that are grown on the
marvelously fertile soil of that State. So they want the Japanese to come
and do the "squat labor" while the Aristocratic Anglo-Saxon reaps the
lion's share of the profits as the owner of the land.
_They tried that once with the Chinese, with what result?_
That the docile and subservient Chinese were the best field laborers that
were ever found by any body of plantation-owners, and for a time the
Caucasian owners of the orchards and vineyards and lordly demesnes of
California prospered mightily from the profits earned for them by the labor
of the lowly Chinese.
_But what happened?_
The Chinese were not only faithful and industrious, they were frugal as
well. They saved their money. Soon they were not only laborers, but also
capitalists, in a small way. Then they began to buy land and work in their
own fields, gardens, and orchards. The industries that produced food from
land as the result of intensive cultivation with human labor were rapidly
passing into the hands of the Chinese. They were rapidly buying the lands
which were the basis of those industries. They were ceasing to work for the
benefit of another race. They worked for themselves and their own benefit.
And that was not all. One after another every manufacturing industry in
California in which human labor was a large element of production was being
absorbed by the Chinese. First they worked for American Manufacturers. Then
they became their own employers and the American Manufacturer was forced
out of business by the economic competition of a stronger race. In the end,
it came to be seen of all men that the Caucasian Manufacturer, the
Caucasian Wageworker, and the Caucasian Landowner, and food producer, were
gradually surrendering to and being eliminated by the economic competition
of the Chinese.
So we excluded the Chinese.
If we had not done so, in less than a generation the Pacific Coast would
have been a Chinese Country, and no oppression or mistreatment to which
they could have been subjected would have prevented it, if they had been
allowed to continue the process of commercial and agricultural absorption
that had progressed so far before we finally excluded them.
Now the Japanese are repeating the same process of absorption. We cannot
exclude them, and if we undertook to do so, it would only be postponing the
evil day, when such a policy would breed an armed conflict. The Japanese
regard the law that prohibits their acquisition of land as a violation of
our treaty with them. They look to our own Courts to finally decide it to
be unconstitutional. It may be a long time coming, but the final result of
the law preventing them from acquiring land in California will be war with
Japan _unless other measures are adopted to supplement one that will
ultimately prove so futile_.
The exclusion of the Japanese from the right to acquire land, but still
permitting them to lease land, makes the situation more dangerous than it
was before. It adds to all the dangers of the purely economic struggle
which resulted from Chinese Competition, the additional danger of all the
bad blood that a tenantry system inevitably develops. Every lease-hold will
develop into a breeding place for friction and conflict between individual
landlords and tenants, as well as conflicts between them as opposing
classes, and will result finally in the same racial controversies that led
up to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Already the Japanese tenantry in the Delta of the San Joaquin River have
formed a protective association to enable them to oppose the organized
power of the mass against any objectionable conditions imposed by their
landlords, as well as to fix the rental they are willing to pay. Does
anyone doubt that such a tenantry system will in time breed as much
controversy as the Nonresident Landlord System has caused in Ireland?
The Japanese Tenantry System in California must in the very nature of
things be a Nonresident Landlord System. It can be nothing else. The
community will be Japanese. The landlord will seek a home elsewhere, in a
Caucasian community. His only thought will be to get all he can from those
whose labor produces his income. Their only thought will be to make that
amount as small as possible. We have created another "Irrepressible
Conflict." Whether we will adjust it without a resort to arms is a very
grave question.
One of the most dangerous elements in this complicated problem is the
self-complacent ignorance and refusal to face facts which characterizes the
attitude of the people not only of the western half, but more particularly
those of the eastern half of the United States. Not long ago a paroxysm of
protest resulted from a rumor that a few hundred Japanese were about to
settle in Michigan. But not the slightest heed is paid to the fact that a
sister State has this problem already within her body politic eating like
a cancer at her very vitals; that she is powerless to effectively settle
the question by herself alone; and that no national disposition exists to
settle it in the only way it can possibly be settled. The way to settle it
is not by building more battleships, or enlarging our standing army, or in
any way increasing our naval or military burdens, or doing anything that
will now or hereafter tend to put the neck of the American people under the
heel of militarism. There can be no settlement of this question other than
the one urged in this book. The question is economic, and the settlement
must be economic.
Japan wants no war with us now. Of that we may rest assured. But any such
treatment of the Japanese as we extended to the Chinese would bring war
instantly. Whether the racial animosity that Japanese competition within
our own territory will inevitably create can be controlled, and conflict
caused by it averted, may well be doubted, unless the people of the entire
United States will recognize the problem as vital and national, and
forthwith apply the only possible practicable solution.
We must recognize both the necessity and the right of Japanese expansion
into new territories. That expansion means the upbuilding of enormous
populations of Japanese in those countries. If ten millions of the most
vigorous of Japan's teeming population could be transplanted from their
native country to garden homes in other countries bordering the Pacific,
where their allegiance to Japan would be unaffected, and colonies developed
that would bear the same relation to the mother country that Canada bears
to Great Britain, it would vastly benefit those who remained in Japan as
well as those who emigrated. There must be such an emigration. It cannot be
prevented. The United States should not oppose it.
But where shall they go?
_To the Philippines?_
There you project a controversy even by discussion. Of course Japan will
not colonize the Philippines while we control them. Aside from that, the
climate is undesirable. The Japanese want to colonize where they can
reproduce their racial strength. The climate of the Philippines would
destroy it. Generations will elapse before the Japanese will covet the
Philippines in order to colonize them, though she might want them for other
reasons.
_Shall they go to Manchuria?_
Yes, to some extent, but the great body of the overflowing population of
Japan will not go to Manchuria.
It is a bleak, cold, dreary, and inhospitable country, already to a large
extent cultivated and populated.
The Japanese will not go to Manchuria for another reason.
They are an Island people and the smell of the sea is in their nostrils.
They already control the commerce of the Pacific and their ambition is to
increase that commerce by every means in their power.
The colonies they will found in the future, the countries that the swarming
millions from Japan will covet and occupy will border the Pacific Ocean,
where the ships that fly the Japanese flag will come and go as the couriers
of a great commerce binding the colonies of Japan to the mother country.
Where then will they go?
_To South America?_
Yes, to its northern shores bordering the Pacific, to Colombia, Ecuador,
and Peru, more particularly to Peru. In a very few years, as history runs,
there will be an immense Japanese population on these Northern Pacific
shores of South America. It is not at all unlikely that in less than a
century there will be a larger population in South America of the Japanese
race than now exists in all of Japan. It will be recruited not only from
the surplus population of the mother country, but from a rapid reproduction
of the Japanese among the transplanted population. There will be no race
suicide among the Japanese. They will stick to the land in these new
countries and breed a race as sturdy as its progenitors. They will never
adopt the Anglo-Saxon system of City Congestion and consequent Racial
Extinction.
_Will they go to Mexico?_
Yes, they will go to Mexico, and the Pacific Coast region of Mexico will
be another breeding ground for this hardy and virile race, where likewise
they will be tillers of the soil and a people hardened and strengthened by
constant contact with Mother Earth.
More than that, the Mexicans will speedily be taught, if they require the
lesson, that if they harm a hair in the head of a Japanese, punishment and
retribution will be sure, swift, and severe. They will live at peace with
the Japanese for that reason. It is the only way to have peace in Mexico,
and Japan is strong enough to enforce peace and the security of the lives
and property of all her people that way.
And because they will do that, they will eventually control and dominate
Mexico, in a good deal the same way that England dominates India. Whenever
they do that, they will protect not only their own people and their
property, but that of all other peoples as well, and everybody will be as
safe in Mexico as in Japan. But the waters that now run to waste in the
Pacific Ocean, on the west coast of Mexico, will be harnessed to irrigate
the orchards and gardens of the Japanese and an Asiatic and not a Caucasian
race will possess Mexico.
"_Why?_" some one asks.
For the very simple reason that the Japanese will occupy Mexico because
they want to reclaim and cultivate its waste lands, and not speculate in
them or exploit somebody else who will cultivate them.
Already the Japanese are as laborers cultivating large areas owned by
American Capitalists in the delta of the Colorado River. That will not
last. The Japanese will before very long organize associations among
themselves and acquire and own the land or some other land which they can
own and cultivate for themselves. There is no alien land law in Mexico that
will prevent that and there will be none. The Japanese will see to that.
Neither will there ever be any long continued peace or security for life or
property in Mexico until either Japan or the United States enforces it. If
we do not, they will. _That is as certain as fate._
And when they undertake the task, dragged into it by some outrage on their
own people, shall we stay their hand, and say to them that the Monroe
Doctrine applies to Asiatic as well as to European nations?
It is only a matter of time when we will have to face that question with
Japan. Japan will no more permit the Mexicans to commit outrages on the
Japanese than she will permit us to do it. Some idea of the conflicts that
race hatred may breed in Mexico will be gained by reading the quotation
that follows from "In Mexico the Land of Unrest," by Henry Baerlin.
In the preface of that book we find this description of a "gentle and
joyous passage at arms" of the Mexicans with the Chinese.
"I fancy that a number of the miscreants who, owing to
a mere misunderstanding, massacred three hundred
Chinamen in Torreon not long since--some were cut into
small pieces, some beheaded, some were tied to horses
by their queues and dragged along the streets, while
others had their arms or legs attached to different
horses and were torn asunder, some were stood up naked
in the market gardens of the neighborhood and given
over as so many targets to the drunken marksmen,
thirteen Chinese employees of Yu Hop's General Store
were haled into the street and killed with knives, two
hundred Chinamen were sheltered in the city gaol, but
all their money was appropriated and such articles of
clothing as the warders fancied. One brave girl had
nine of them concealed, and calmly she denied their
presence even when her father had gone out to argue
with the mob and had been shot for being on the Chinese
side--a number of these miscreants, I fancy, are on
other days delightful citizens."[1]
[Footnote 1: "The Mexicans are descended, on the one side," says Mr.
Cunningham Graham, "from the most bloodthirsty race of Indians that the
Spanish Conquerors came across, and on the other side from the very
fiercest elements of the Spanish race itself--elements which had just
emerged from eight hundred years of warfare with the Moors."]
Think you that the Japanese would submit to that without war? The account
of this racial outrage may be overdrawn, but judging from what happened in
our own country when the Chinese were being persecuted prior to the
Exclusion Act, there is nothing inherently improbable in this account. It
is no worse than the Turkish outrages that have often been committed on
Christians in Asia Minor or in Europe.
China has submitted to all such outrages because for centuries she has been
a nation of peace, but the time is not far distant when she will do so no
longer.
With the United States, a nation with a government, in case of race
conflict, leading to insult or injury to Japanese, we could make amends, or
fight, as we chose, and we would probably make amends.
In Mexico, likely at any time to be without a government, as she is now, a
conflict with Japan would be very apt to result like the recent differences
between the Turks and the English in Egypt. The Land of the Montezumas
would become a Protectorate of the Land of Nippon and a part of its Empire
Power.
The Japanese problem would then be transferred from across the Pacific to
across the Rio Grande, and Japanese cotton mills at Guaymas would get their
cotton from the cotton fields of the Colorado River Valley. They would
transport it by water down the Colorado River and across the Gulf of
California and develop a great ocean commerce from the territory that is
tributary to the Gulf of California. That includes the whole valley of the
Colorado River if its transportation facilities were adequately and
comprehensively developed, as the Japanese would develop it, by lines of
Japanese steamers running up the Colorado River at least as far as Yuma.
The American Railroads could not strangle Japanese competition.
CHAPTER VII
_The potential economic strength and creative power of the people of Japan
may be illustrated by what they would do with the Colorado River Valley and
watershed if it were to become Japanese territory, and what we must do with
it if we are to hold our ground against their economic competition in the
eternal racial struggle for the survival of the fittest._
The Colorado River has been aptly called the Nile of America. There is a
most remarkable resemblance. In the valley of this American Nile another
Egypt could be created. All the fertility, wealth, population, products,
art, and romance of the Land of the Pharaohs could be reproduced in the
valley of this great American river. A city as large as Alexandria at Yuma,
and another as large as Cairo at Parker, are quite within reasonable
expectations whenever the resources of the Colorado River country are
comprehensively developed.
But even that comparison of possibilities gives no adequate conception of
what might be accomplished by the Japanese in the way of creative
development in the drainage basin of the Colorado River.
Another Japanese Empire could be made there, with all the vast productive
power, population, and national wealth of the present Land of Nippon. That
is what the Japanese would do with it if they had the country to develop
according to Japanese economic ideals and their methods of soil cultivation
and production. They know full well the possibilities of the Colorado River
country. Already the Japanese cultivators of the soil are at the Gateway to
this great valley, just below the international boundary line in Mexico.
They are now doing there the manual labor necessary to develop and produce
crops from Mexican lands owned by Americans in the lower delta of the
Colorado River.
The Japanese, if they had the opportunity, would give the same careful
study to every minute detail of conquesting the Colorado River Valley from
the Desert that they gave to defeating Russia in the war they fought to
save their national existence against the sea power and land power of the
Russian Empire.
They would measure the water that runs to waste, as we have done. They
would select and plat the land it should be used to irrigate, which we have
not done. They would survey every reservoir site in the Colorado Canyon and
test the foundations, which we have not done. They would calculate the
aggregate volume of electric power that could be generated by a series of
reservoirs in the Colorado Canyon, which we have not done.
They would estimate, as we have done, the total amount of sediment carried
by the river every year into the Gulf of California and wasted. They would
find that the Colorado River discharges during an average year into the
Gulf of California 338,000,000 tons of mud and silt as suspended matter,
and in addition to this 19,490,000 tons of gypsum, lime, sodium chloride
and other salts,--in all a total of 357,490,000 tons each year of
fertilizing material. It is enough to give to 3,574,900 acres an annual
fertilization of one hundred tons of this marvelously rich material that
would be annually carried by the water to the land if proper scientific
methods were adopted for the reclamation of the irrigable land located
between Needles and Yuma, which is over three and a half million acres. The
fertilization thus given to the land would be of value equal to that with
which the Nile has fertilized Egypt every year since before the dawn of
history.
They would find that the total run-off from the Colorado River watershed
that now runs to waste is enough to irrigate 5,000,000 acres of land
located in the main valley of the river between the mouth of the Colorado
Canyon and the Mexican boundary line. They would find that the area of land
so located that can be irrigated by gravity canals is 2,000,000 acres; that
1,500,000 more acres can be irrigated by pumping with electric power
generated in the river, and, from the best information now obtainable,
that the area irrigated by pumping can eventually be enlarged another
1,500,000 acres, making a total in all of 5,000,000 irrigable acres in the
main Colorado River Valley, including the Imperial Valley and the valley
above Yuma. Including the entire watershed or drainage basin of the
Colorado River, and all lands irrigable from underground supplies, and
enlarging the irrigable area to the fullest extent that it would ultimately
be enlarged by return seepage, they would find that they could eventually
irrigate more than 12,500,000 acres, which is as much land as is now
irrigated and cultivated in Japan.
They would figure on _acreculture_ rather than _agriculture_, and would
investigate to the minutest detail the problem of fertilization. They would
figure on handling the silt of the Colorado River just as the silt of the
Nile is handled in Egypt, fertilizing as large an area as possible with it.
The Colorado River carries silt that is very fine and enough of it could be
brought in the water every year to practically every irrigated field, to
maintain the incredible fertility and productiveness of the bottom lands
and increase that of the mesa lands.
They would look for phosphate, potash, and nitrogen for fertilizers. They
would find that an inexhaustible supply of potash could be manufactured
from the giant kelp beds of the Pacific Coast. They would learn that there
are in the territory included in the drainage basin of the Colorado River
unlimited deposits of phosphate rock from which all needed phosphate could
be mined. Nitrogen, they would ascertain, could be produced from the air in
immense quantities by the use of the electric power which could be
developed without limit in the canyon of the Colorado River.
They would utilize for that purpose all the vast surplus of electric power
from the Colorado River as it whirls and plunges down the most stupendous
river gorge in the world. In addition to producing all they needed to
fertilize their own lands they would produce enough nitrogen, potash and
phosphates to supply the markets of the world.
The land, the water, and the fertilizer being thus assured, they would find
the climate such that even the intensive methods of gardening now customary
in Japan, would give no idea of the possibilities of acreage production in
the Colorado River Valley. In that valley acreculture would be hothouse
culture out-of-doors. The hot climate of the country would be found, when
this economic survey of it was made, to be its greatest asset.
They would find that every product of the tropical and semi-tropical
countries of the world could be here produced to perfection. They would
find that by actual experience extending over many years, an acre of land
in such a climate, closely cultivated and abundantly fertilized, and
cropped several times a year, would produce from $1000 to $2000 net profit
annually and even more, depending on the skill of the cultivator.
They would find that the skilled soil-cultivators of Japan could by this
system of hothouse culture out-of-doors, provide all the food for an
average family for a year, and produce over and above that an average of
$1000 net profit per acre every year. This would include every product now
successfully grown in Southern California.
They would find that the Colorado River could be canalized from Yuma to the
Needles, and the Gila and Salt Rivers canalized from Yuma to Phoenix and
Florence, and a ship canal built from Yuma to the Gulf of California. Then
the products from this wonderfully prolific country could be shipped from
Yuma to every seaport of the world. Through the Panama Canal they could
reach every seaport on the Atlantic Coast. By trans-shipment at New Orleans
to canal or river steamers or barges they would connect with a river system
20,000 miles in extent for the distribution of their products to inland
territory.
They would calculate the cost of reclamation and the value of the reclaimed
land, measured by its productive power. They would figure that they could
afford to spend on the reclamation of the land at least an amount equal to
the value of one year's production from the land. That would be $1000 per
acre. Figuring only on the 5,000,000 acres that could be reclaimed in the
main lower valley of the Colorado River below the canyon, they would find
that it would justify a total expenditure of five billion dollars.
Some enterprising American Congressional Economist would then tell them
that they surely could not contemplate spending that much _on anything but
a war_. They would tell him that they were _going into a war with the
Desert_ and they proposed to triumph in it, just as they triumphed in the
war with Russia. There would be this difference: all they spent on the
Russian War was gone past recovery. They had to spend it or cease to exist
as a nation. In this war with the Desert they would spend five billion
dollars, and for it they would create a country that would produce food
worth five billion dollars a year every year through all future time.
Then the American Speculator would come on the scene with his accumulated
wisdom gained through many failures of colonization schemes because there
were no colonists or not enough to keep up with the interest on the bonds
issued. The American Speculator would warn the Japanese against such a
gigantic blunder as they were about to make in undertaking such a
stupendous colonization scheme.
And the Japanese Statesmen and Financiers would point out to him not only
that they had all the colonists they needed right at home in Japan, but
that instead of its being necessary to spend a large sum of money to induce
those colonists to emigrate to the new lands, they were having much trouble
now to keep the colonists from going to the Pacific Coast where they are
not wanted. They would explain that they are overcrowded in Japan; that
their surplus population must go somewhere; that they are the most skilled
gardeners and orchardists in the world; that the same men who would build
the irrigation works, and the power plants, would settle right down on the
reclaimed lands, glad to get an acre apiece, and live on it and cultivate
it with their families.
So the Japanese in this thorough way would go at this great work of
wresting a new Japanese Empire from the Desert. They would not do any
construction work until they had made a complete comprehensive plan of
every detail of this new empire they were starting to build. Then they
would go to the Colorado Canyon and begin by building a great diversion dam
as far down the canyon as might be practicable to lift the water high
enough to carry it in high line canal systems along both sides of the
valley, and to bring it out on the mesa lands and use it where the land
most needs the silt for a fertilizer. They would figure on first reclaiming
all the mesa land on which the water could in this way be used, and then
they would build pumping plants with which to irrigate the more elevated
lands.
They would reclaim the mesa land first because every acre of mesa land that
was reclaimed would serve as a sponge to soak up the flood water. By
carrying out that plan they would eventually relieve the lowlands in the
floor of the valley from all danger of overflow. They would not have to
spend anything to control the floods of the Colorado River. There would be
no floods. The Japanese would begin at the right end of the problem, and
build big enough at the start to solve it as a whole, comprehensively.
Their plan would be to use up every drop of the flood water by irrigating
land with it. There would never at any time of the year be any water
running to waste in the lower river. There would never be in the main river
more than enough water to supply the canals that irrigated the lowlands of
the lower delta. The ship canal from Yuma to the Gulf, and the canals from
Yuma to the Needles, Phoenix, and Florence would be not irrigating canals,
but drainage canals.
The Japanese would control and utilize all the water that now runs to waste
in the Colorado River. They would save and use, not a part of it, but every
drop of it. They would, as they have done in Japan, preserve the sources of
the water supplies from destruction by overgrazing, deforestation, and
erosion. They would build the Charleston Reservoir, on the San Pedro. They
would stop the floods that now devastate that valley and wash away and
destroy its farm lands. They would build the Verde Reservoir, the Agua Fria
Reservoir, the San Carlos Reservoir, and every other reservoir on every
tributary of the Colorado required to control for use the immense volume of
water that we now waste.
They would go into Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, and do the same thing in
those States. They would build great dams and reservoirs in the Canyon of
the Colorado River, and would produce therefrom electric power enough to
furnish power for every farm and mine and city in the whole basin of the
Colorado River, and power to pump back onto the mesas water which had once
done duty by irrigating the lower lands.
They would reclaim in the Drainage Basin of the Colorado River as much land
as is now cultivated in all of Japan. They would subdivide it into Garden
Homes for their industrious tillers of the soil. They would eventually put
on such Garden Homes as many of their land-cultivators and
gardener-soldiers with their families as they now have in Japan. They
would be more prosperous because the land is more fertile and the crops
would be more valuable.
Their system of land cultivation would not be farming, as we understand it.
It would be gardening, of the closest and most intensive kind. Such a
system of land cultivation in the Colorado River Valley, under their system
of development, would produce as much per acre as hothouse culture under
glass in a cold climate. Everything that can be raised in Japan they would
produce. Everything that can be raised in Egypt or Arabia, or anywhere on
the shores of the Mediterranean, they would produce.
They would make of the Colorado River Valley the greatest date-producing
country of the world. Oranges, lemons, grape-fruit, and every known
tropical and semi-tropical fruit of commerce would be raised by them in
this American Valley of the Nile. They would establish a system of land
tillage by their intensive methods which would support in comfort and
plenty a family on every acre. They would eventually, in California,
Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and on the Colorado River Delta in Mexico, put
12,500,000 acres under such cultivation and settle it with as dense a
population as they now have in Japan, where they sustain 30,000,000 rural
people on 12,500,000 acres.
That would leave them many millions of acres--of the higher, colder, and
less fertile lands on the watersheds of the tributary streams in Arizona,
Nevada, and Utah, for grazing and timber growing. The population sustained
by these industries, added to that which would be sustained by mining, and
electrical power, and the multitude of manufacturing industries which they
would establish, would bring the total population of the basin of the
Colorado River and its tributaries, under this Japanese development, up to
fifty million people. That is a population as large as that which now bears
on its shoulders all the burdens of the Japanese Empire, including its army
and navy.
The Japanese would pump from underground with electric power the last
possible drop of available water to promote surface production. The great
torrential downpours that come occasionally in that country would be
controlled by systems of embankments and soaked into the ground to
replenish the underground supplies instead of being allowed to run to
waste, carrying destruction in their path. They would from their dams in
the Colorado River Canyon develop power that would pump water high enough
to reach such vast areas of rich and fertile land as the Hualpi Valley--at
least enough to turn such lands into forest plantations where water enough
for agriculture could not be provided for the land.
Add to the wealth they would produce from their garden farms the wealth
they would dig from the mines, develop from the water power, and produce in
their factories, and they would create more annual wealth from this now
desolate and uninhabited region in the Colorado River Valley than is to-day
annually produced in the Japanese Empire. And more than that, they would be
producing a strong and virile people. Every man would be a soldier in time
of need and a Japanese army of more than five million men would be able to
take the field at a moment's warning, leaving the youths who were too young
and the men who were too old for military service, with the aid of the
women and children, to cultivate the acre garden homes.
Why is not all this done by the Caucasian race who now control this great
valley of the American Nile--the people whose flag flies over it?
Why, with all this incredible wealth lying undeveloped under our feet, do
we not seize the necessary tools and develop it ourselves?
Why indeed? The facts stated are facts, physical facts not to be denied.
Why do we leave this empire untouched?
_Because thus far our only system of development has been speculation and
human exploitation._
Because we seem to have known no way of settling a new country except to
permit a generation of speculators to skim the cream before the actual
tillers of the soil get a chance to cultivate it.
Because the agricultural immigrants from Italy--the ideal settlers for the
Colorado River Valley--are being herded in Concentration Camps in the
tenements of the congested cities. Their skill as gardeners is wasted,
their knowledge of art and handicraft lost, their children morally and
physically degenerated, and their racial strength diminished. Gunmen and
black-handers are evolved from that evil environment. We are rotting a race
of virile rural people, instead of directing the vast human power inherent
in them to creating a new Valley of the Nile, and building a new Alexandria
at Yuma and a new Cairo at Parker, and planting every family that was
located on a Garden Home in that marvelously rich country in another Garden
of Eden.
Because the railroads and the water power syndicates, with their allies the
War Department engineers, seem to have the power to perpetuate this system
of Speculation and Human Exploitation, and in consequence to dedicate the
Colorado River Valley to desolation. They apparently have the power to
inject some deadly poison into the arteries and veins of conventions and
congresses and legislative bodies that makes action impossible along any
line of constructive effort that would free the people from the thralldom
of corporate opposition to government construction.
Australia and New Zealand,--Japan, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland have
escaped from this thralldom and are a free and independent people, capable
of directing the development of their resources, _and they are doing it_.
The people of the United States have abolished human slavery, but they have
been unable as yet to free themselves from the domination of organized
capital or the influence of the aggregated appetite of an army of
speculators and exploiters of our national resources. As a nation we are
shackled by the Spirit of Speculation which insidiously opposes any
legislation that would save our resources from speculative exploitation or
directly develop them by government construction for the benefit of the
people.
Those who comprise this speculative class, which opposes all such
constructive legislation, on the ground that it is paternalism, are the
ones who cry loudest for the increase of Militarism. They want an army
_hired_ to defend the nation and their property from attack. They
constantly advocate increasing the $250,000,000 a year we now spend on our
army and navy. Then they cry economy when it is proposed to spend less than
half that amount every year throughout the whole United States to defend
the country against the devastating forces of Nature. As a result the
people are unable to safeguard against the recurrence of such appalling
catastrophies as the Ohio Valley floods of 1913 or the Mississippi Valley
floods of 1912 and 1913.
The creation of a new empire, more populous, and with a people living in
greater comfort and producing more wealth each year in the Colorado River
Drainage Basin than in the Japanese Empire of to-day, cannot be permitted
to be done by the Japanese because the territory belongs to the United
States. And this country cannot be allowed to do it from the viewpoint of
the speculators, unless it can be accomplished for the benefit of private
speculation. The speculators insist they must be free from any restrictions
that would prevent them from exploiting generations yet unborn who will
till the soil and use the water power in their industries.
_Let the Speculators have their way and what will happen?_
Already the inconceivable fertility of this region is known to the
Japanese. Already they are quietly absorbing the opportunities to cultivate
its land, either as laborers for American Landowners below the line in
Mexico, or as tenants in the great Imperial Valley in California. They are
as familiar as we are with the Orange Groves of Sonora. They know that on
the Pacific Coast below Guaymas there are millions of acres of country just
as beautiful as Southern California, but which is now unreclaimed, where
the sparkling streams from the Sierra Madres course uselessly through
thickets of wild lemon trees on their way to the ocean.
If we wait for the speculators to do it, long before the time comes when
they can get the aid from the national government necessary to enable them
to reclaim and settle the desert lands, and develop the water power of the
Colorado River, there will be a Japanese population of many millions in the
Colorado River Delta below the line and on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.
They will go to Mexico to cultivate the soil and live on it. The Caucasian
as a rule goes to Mexico to get land away from the Mexicans and speculate
on it or monopolize it. So long as that is our system of development, we
cannot complain if the industrious Japanese go there and live on the land
and produce food from it to help feed the people of all the earth. The
American goes to Mexico in the hope of making enough money to be able to
live without work. The Japanese goes there to get an opportunity to work
and to dig his living from Mother Earth by his own labor. Which will
prevail, think you, in the struggle to possess the unoccupied and untilled
lands of the Pacific shores of Mexico?
We are told we must employ more soldiers to protect us. The Japanese
colonists, wherever they go, will go with both a hoe and a gun, and will
protect themselves.
If the Colorado River Valley is to remain dedicated to speculation and
exploitation, we could not maintain upon its deserts a standing army large
enough, if we should have a war with Japan, to make even a pretense of
protecting it from invasion from the south by the Japanese after they have
settled those Mexican lands. They would not stop with taking the
Philippines and Hawaii, California, Oregon, and Washington. They would
sweep up from the south with an army of a million men from Mexico and
extend their dominion over all the arid region. From the Cascade and the
Sierra Nevada Ranges to the crest of the Rocky Mountains and from the
Canadian line to Mexico would become Japanese territory.
But that is too long a time in the future, the average self-complacent
American says, to be of any immediate interest. It would take the Japanese
more than a generation to put a million colonists in Mexico. Perhaps it
would. It will take the Japanese a generation to double the Japanese
population on the shores of the Pacific in Asia and America. Now they have
only fifty million people. In one generation more they will have a hundred
million and a goodly portion of them will be in America. Is it any too soon
for this nation to begin right now to build the safeguards against that
danger? Bear in mind that there are men and women now living who remember
Chicago when there was nothing there but Old Fort Dearborn and a few log
houses. Bear in mind that in less than ten years, from 1900 to 1908, more
than 65,000 Japanese emigrated to Hawaii, and that in a single year, 1907,
30,226 Japanese came to the United States, and that in 1909 the number of
trained and seasoned Japanese soldiers in Hawaii exceeded the entire field
army of the United States. How long would it take Japan to put a million
colonists--men of military age--on the Pacific Coast of Mexico?
In "The Great Illusion," Norman Angell argues that war must cease because
it does not pay. Would that argument apply in case of a war between the
United States and Japan, with reference to the Colorado River Country and
the rest of the territory now lying in the United States between the Rocky
Mountains on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west?
In the Colorado River Valley alone the Japanese would get 5,000,000 acres
capable of being made to produce by their system of cultivation a net
profit of $1,000 an acre, over and above a living for its cultivators. That
would make a total of five billion dollars a year.
In addition they would get 12,500,000 acres in the Sacramento and San
Joaquin Valleys in California which if they produced from it only a net
profit of $500 an acre every year--would yield a total of two and a half
billion dollars annually. Oregon, Washington and Idaho would add as much
more land, making another two and a half billion dollars a year.
That is a total annual production to which the Japanese would develop this
land within a generation of Ten billion dollars a year--and very little of
the land is to-day cultivated. Most of it is unreclaimed desert.
In addition to this the mineral output of the states lying entirely within
that territory for 1913 was as follows:
Arizona $71,000,000
California 100,700,000
Idaho 24,500,000
Nevada 37,800,000
Oregon 3,500,000
Utah 53,000,000
Washington 17,500,000
Total $308,000,000
In addition, a considerable portion of the states of Colorado, New Mexico
and Wyoming lies within the territory under consideration. The mineral
output of these states for 1913 was as follows:
Colorado $54,000,000
New Mexico 17,800,000
Wyoming 12,500,000
Total $84,300,000
The total mineral production of all the above named States, and including
Montana, for the ten years ending with 1913 was $3,322,003,895.
The lands in the delta of the Colorado River where the Japanese are now
settling comprise more than a million acres of the most marvelously
fertile land in all the world.
The Japanese who are now going into the delta country of the Colorado River
are not going where they are unwelcome. The American who wants to use their
labor to cultivate his land, in order that he may get a profit from it
without working the land himself, is busy starting the Asiatic invasion
that will eventually sweep over that Land of Promise. It is an invasion
that will ultimately transfer that country from American to Asiatic
control, unless the American people wake up and decide without delay to do
_the one and only thing_ that can possibly prevent this from happening.
What is that "one and only thing" that they must do to save the Colorado
River Valley for our own people?
_Why it is to occupy, cultivate, use, and possess it ourselves, and do with
it exactly what the Japanese would do with it if they possessed it as a
part of the territory of the Empire of Japan._
What would have to be done to accomplish that has already been told.
_How is it to be done?_
By thrusting to one side the speculators and exploiters and demanding from
Congress the necessary legislative machinery and money to conquest the
Colorado River Valley from the desert, with exactly the same inexorable
insistence with which the money would be demanded if it were needed for
defense against an invading German force that had landed in New England and
was marching on New York; with exactly the same irresistible popular
cyclone that will roar about the ears of Congress in the future, if their
supine neglect now does some day actually lead to a Japanese invasion of
the United States.
If the people of the United States can get their feet out of the quicksands
of land-speculation, water-speculation, power-speculation, and the
operations of water-power syndicates, they can create a country as populous
and powerful as the Japanese Empire in the Drainage Basin of the Colorado
River. If we will eliminate that one great obstacle, we can do it
ourselves, just as well as the Japanese could do it. Our subserviency to
the Spirit of Speculation is the only thing that stands in the way of it.
Every problem involved has been solved by some other country and partly
solved by our own. There is no reason why the United States cannot adopt
the Australian and New Zealand Systems for the acquisition, reclamation,
subdivision, and settlement of land.
There is no reason why the United States should not control its water power
resources on such a stream as the Colorado River; and, when advisable,
build, own, and operate power plants and distribute power.
_Shall we admit that we cannot do what Australia, New Zealand, Norway,
Sweden, and Switzerland have done?_
Under the United States Reclamation Act we have already undertaken to
reclaim land for settlement, and to build power plants, but we have failed
to safeguard the land or the power against speculative acquisition.
However, what we have already accomplished has made for progress, and makes
it easier to do what remains to be done.
When we come to the qualifications of colonists, and the necessity that
they should be Homecrofters, the question becomes more difficult, because
the majority of the people of the United States have no conception of the
possibilities of acreproduction or acreculture by a skilled and
scientifically trained truck-gardener and fruit-grower and poultry-raiser.
There are innumerable instances where truck gardens along the Atlantic
Coast, on Long Island, and in New Jersey, Virginia, and Florida, are
producing more than a thousand dollars worth of vegetables every year. It
is a most common thing for berry-growers to realize that acreage product
from an acre of berries in Louisiana or Washington. Celery, asparagus,
lettuce, onions, and many other crops will yield as much when properly
fertilized and cultivated. Anyone who doubts this can find ample proof of
it at Duluth, Minnesota, or in California or Texas. Another thing should be
borne in mind. One acre of land in the Colorado River Valley is the
equivalent of five acres in a cold climate. Crops may be planted and
matured so rapidly in that hot climate that plant growth more resembles
hothouse forcing than ordinary out-of-door truck gardening. Another
important fact is that all the tropical and semi-tropical fruits grow to
perfection in that valley.
This whole subject is exhaustively elucidated in "Fields, Factories and
Workshops," by Prince Kropotkin, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons of New
York. No one will form an opinion adverse to the possibilities of
acreculture after reading that book.
Successful acreculture requires, however, _a man who knows how_. The
Japanese know how. The Chinese know how. The Belgians know how. Many of the
French, Germans, and Italians know how. The Americans, with few exceptions,
do not know how, _but they can be taught_. They will seize the opportunity
to learn as soon as it is open to them as part of a large national plan.
Every Homecroft Settlement created in the Colorado River Valley should be a
great educational institution, a training school to teach men and women
how to raise fruit, vegetables, and poultry, and how to prepare their
products for market, and how to market them, and how to get their own food
from their own acre by their own labor.
_Thousands of the immigrants_ now coming to the United States from Southern
Europe already know how to do all this and would make ideal colonists for
the Colorado River Valley.
_Thousands are out of work_ who, if healthy and physically fit, could be
trained to garden in a year; to be good gardeners in three years; and to be
scientific experts in gardening in five years.
In the event of a war under existing conditions we would have to train a
million recruits to be soldiers. It is equally certain that men can be
trained to be gardeners and Homecrofters. It takes longer to train a
Homecrofter than to train a soldier, but it is only a question of time.
It can be done and it will be done by the United States as a measure of
national defense as soon as the people can be brought to realize the great
fundamental fact that the only way they can provide as many soldiers as
they might need in some great national emergency is to begin in time of
peace--and that means _now_--and train them to be both Homecrofters and
soldiers, as the Japanese are trained. The Japanese are a nation of
Homecrofters. The Homecroft Reservists who should be trained for national
defense by the United States, will get their living as gardeners and
Homecrofters when they are not needed as soldiers, or until they are needed
as soldiers, as is the case in Japan with their organized reserve of
1,170,000 men and the great majority of their unorganized reserve of
7,021,780 men.
The Drainage Basin of the Colorado River has an area of 265,000 square
miles. Japan has an area of 147,655 square miles, less than the area of the
drainage basin of the Colorado River in Arizona and New Mexico. Arizona
alone contains 143,956 square miles, and has a population of only 204,354.
Japan has a population of 52,200,200. She now sustains in the Home Country
a standing army at peace strength of 217,032, with Reserves of 1,170,000,
making a total war strength of about 1,400,000 and she has available for
duty but unorganized a total of 7,021,780.
The same Japanese System with the same Japanese population in the Colorado
River Drainage Basin would sustain an army of the same strength. And they
can do it on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, or on the Pacific Coast of South
America, or anywhere else in as good a climate where they can get a
territory of 147,000 square miles, of which 12,500,000 acres can be
irrigated and intensively cultivated.
_Is it not evident that it is the economic potentialities of the Japanese
race that we must meet?_
We can do it in the Colorado River Country. In the main valley below the
mouth of the Colorado Canyon we can maintain a permanent reserve of
5,000,000 men, Homecrofters and gardeners in time of peace, soldiers in
time of war, and all organized, trained, and equipped--instantly ready for
any emergency. All we would have to do to accomplish that, would be to
reclaim and colonize the land, and train the colonists to be Homecrofters,
and then apply the entire Military System of Switzerland or Australia to
this one small tract of five million acres of land in the Colorado River
Valley, with conveniently adjacent territory in Arizona and California in
the drainage basin of the Colorado River.
It would be entirely practicable to do that, because the National
Government would control the School System, and would control the System of
Life of the community and adapt it to the Homecroft Reserve System. Every
one of 5,000,000 Homecrofters could leave his acre without hindrance to any
organized industry and without jeopardizing the welfare of his family. The
objections to a Reserve of Citizen Soldiery in the ordinary communities of
the United States would have no application in these communities that had
been created for the purpose of furnishing soldiers trained when needed in
time of war, as well as to develop the highest type of citizenship in time
of peace.
A start could be made with 100,000 acres; 100,000 gardeners; 100,000
soldiers. The land and water required for that could be located to-morrow
and construction work begun in a month. This number should be increased as
rapidly as the land could be reclaimed and colonized with Homecrofters in
acre homes and the organization of new communities perfected. The Reserve
composed of Homecrofters occupying these acre homes should be known as the
Homecroft Reserve.
If no extension of this proposed Homecroft Reserve System were made into
any other section of the country there would be soldiers enough in the
Colorado River Valley to defend the Mexican Border, the Pacific Coast, and
the Canadian Border from North Dakota to Seattle, at any time when the
necessity arose for such defense.
The establishment of this large Homecroft Reserve in the Colorado River
Valley, fully trained and equipped for military service at a moment's
notice, exactly as the Reserves of Switzerland are trained and equipped,
would be a complete defense against any danger of Japanese invasion, which
can be safeguarded against in no other way.
_Is it not better to begin now and spend the money in conquering the Desert
than to wait and spend it conquering Japan, or Japan and China combined?_
CHAPTER VIII
_The value of the proposed Homecroft Reserve System as a force for national
defense would have been demonstrated in the present European War if England
had, years ago, established such a reserve in Scotland, instead of driving
thousands of Homecrofters to other lands to make way for deer parks and
hunting grounds. The Scotch Homecrofters, if that system for a Military
Reserve had been established, would have been just such soldiers as those
who have made the glorious record of the Black Watch and the Gordon
Highlanders and other famous Scotch regiments. There might just as well as
not have been a million of them in Scotland, trained and hardy soldiers,
organized and equipped as the Reserves of Switzerland are completely
organized to-day and ready for instant mobilization. The Scotch
Homecrofters would have been getting their living in time of peace by
cultivating their little crofts, and as fishermen, and would have been
always ready to fight for their country in time of war._
Had there been such a Homecroft Reserve in Scotland, with a million men
enlisted in it and fully organized, officered, and equipped for instant
service in the field, Germany would have pondered long before starting this
war. Would not the German people, as well as the English, be glad now if
the war had never been started? But if, notwithstanding all this, the war
had been started, an army of a million brave and hardy Scots would have
been on the firing line before the German columns had got past Louvain.
Belgium would have been protected from devastation. There would have been
no invasion of France.
But the English people stubbornly refused to heed warnings of the danger of
war with Germany.
_We are doing the same with reference to Japan._
The English with stolid, self-satisfied complacency pinned their faith
entirely on their navy as a national defense.
_We are doing practically the same thing, with reference to Japan._
And now the English have been awakened by an appalling national catastrophe
which was preventable.
_Must we be awakened in the same way?_
A Scotch Homecroft Reserve of a million men would have been an almost
certain guarantee that no war would have broken out; and if it had, such a
Homecroft Reserve would have been worth to England the billions of dollars
she is now spending in a paroxysm of haste to train a million soldiers for
service on the continent and to conduct the war. The Scotch Homecroft
Reserve would have had the added value of being thoroughly trained and
hardened troops as compared with the new levies they are now training to be
soldiers. Those raw levies of volunteers, many from clerical employments,
lack the qualities that would have been furnished by the Scotch
Highlanders, or the descendants of forty generations of border-raiders, or
the hardy fishermen of the Sea Coast and Islands of Scotland. Some idea of
the sort of men who would have composed this Scotch Homecroft Reserve that
England might have had, may be gained from the following very brief story
of the Gordon Highlanders which appeared in the "Kansas City Times" of
October 27, 1914:
"Who's for the Gathering, who's for the Fair?
(Gay goes the Gordon to a fight.)
The bravest of the brave are at deadlock there.
(Highlanders! March! By the right!)
There are bullets by the hundred buzzing in the air:
There are bonny lads lying on the hillsides bare;
But the Gordons know what the Gordons dare
When they hear their pipes playing.
--'The Gay Gordons,' by Henry Newbolt.
"One hundred and thirty years ago the bagpipes of the
'Gay Gordons' first swirled the pibroch. Since then
they have played it in every clime and nearly every
land where British troops have fought.
"The Duke of Gordon was granted a 'Letter of Service'
in 1794 to organize a Highland infantry regiment among
his clansmen. Lady Gordon, 'The Darling Duchess,' took
charge of the enlisting. Their son, the Marquis of
Huntley, was the first colonel.
"The Gordons first saw service against the French in
Holland in 1799. Outnumbered six to one, they received
their baptism of fire in a wild charge at Egmont-op-Zee
that made all Great Britain ring with their praises.
Their first laurels, won at a bloody cost, have never
been dimmed.
"From Holland they went to Egypt, and with the Black
Watch, the Cameronians and the Perthshire Greybreeks
stormed up the shore of Aboukir Bay and later the
height of Mandora. The name of every battle of
Napoleon's futile attempt to master Egypt appears on
their battle flags.
"They came home from there to line the streets of
London at Nelson's funeral, a post of honor coveted by
every British regiment. Next they appeared in Denmark
and were at the fall of Copenhagen. Without a visit to
Scotland the Gordons went to Spain and went through the
glorious campaign of Sir John Moore. The French long
remembered them for their fight at Corunna.
"When the British were retreating, the Gordons were the
rear guard. At Elvania Sir John galloped along their
line. Ammunition was low and no supplies available.
"'My brave Highlanders! You still have your bayonets!
Remember Egypt!' the commander shouted.
"The pipers took up 'The Cock o' the North,' the
sobriquet of the Duke of Gordon, and routed the
pursuing French. The Gordons went to Portugal. Almarez
is on their flags. They followed the Duke of Wellington
back into Spain and were in the fights that sent
Joseph Bonaparte's army reeling home.
"The Gordons stood with the Black Watch at Quatre Bras,
and two days later were at Waterloo. It was the Duchess
of Richmond, a daughter of the Duchess of Gordon who
recruited the Gordons, who gave the famous ball in
Brussels the night before Waterloo. The officers of the
Gay Gordons hurried from that levee, which Lord Byron,
another Gordon, has commemorated in a poem, to the
field of battle.
"The feat of the Gordons that day, in grabbing the
stirrups of the charging Scots Greys, is one of
history's most stirring pages. It is a striking
coincidence that in the present war, just ninety-nine
years later, the Gordons swung to the Greys' stirrups
in another wild charge, this time against the Germans.
"The Gordons went to the Afghan War in 1878. In 1881
they campaigned across the veldts against the Boers.
The next year they stood at El-Teb and Tel-el-Kebir
with their old friends the Black Watch. They marched to
Khartum when their namesake, Gordon, was trapped. That
over, they went back to India for another Afghan war.
They marched by the scenes of their bloody fights when
going to the relief of Lucknow.
"In 1897 the Gordons were the heroes of all Britain.
They, and a regiment of Gurkhas, charged a hill at
Dargai in the face of almost superhuman difficulties.
Two years later the regiment went to South Africa and
fought valiantly through that war. At Eldanslaagte they
were part of the column of General French, their
present commander.
"The red uniform coat of the Gordons is lavishly
trimmed in yellow, which brought them the sobriquet of
'Gay Gordons.' Of all the Scotch regiments it has tried
the hardest to keep its ranks filled with Scotsmen,
'limbs bred in the purple heather.'
"Officially the Gordons are the Ninety-second Highland
Infantry."
England's original expeditionary force to the continent in 1914 was less
than 200,000 men. Suppose it had been 1,200,000. It might just as well have
been 1,200,000, if a Scotch Homecroft Reserve had been long ago
established, as should have been done, and gradually increased until a
million men were enlisted in it. Would any one question the fact, if there
had been another million men in England's expeditionary army when it was
first sent to the continent, that it would have completely changed the
whole current of events in this war? It would have checked the German
advance into France and Belgium. Not a foot of Belgium's territory would
have been wrested from her. Neither Brussels nor Antwerp would have been
surrendered.
That conclusion is so self-evident and conservative, and the opportunity
that England had to have such a force in reserve is so plain that it seems
hard to believe that the United States will ignore its lesson and fail to
establish a Homecroft Reserve in this country.
England had the original stock from which to breed such a brave and hardy
race of soldiers, and _they were the original Homecrofters_. There were not
a million of them, but there were many thousands of them two centuries ago.
There were so many that to-day there might easily have been a million such
Homecrofters in England's army in Europe if the Homecroft Reserve System
had been established when the trouble first began between the Homecrofters
and the Great Landlords who finally succeeded in riveting the curse of land
monopoly around Scotland's neck.
It may be argued that this suggestion is an afterthought, and that, as the
Arab saying puts it, "The ditches are full of bright afterthoughts." That
may be true as to England. But it is not true as to the United States. If
we knew that it would be two hundred years before the great final struggle
would be fought to determine whether the Pacific Coast of the United States
should be dominated by the Asiatic or Caucasian race, right now is the time
when we should begin to breed and train our millions of men who will have
to fight that battle for us whenever the time does come that it has to be
fought. It is as inevitable as fate that the conflict will come unless we
safeguard against it by peopling America with a race as hardy and virile as
the races on the Pacific shores of Asia are to-day.
The rugged physical manhood, rough daring and bravery, hardihood and
endurance, self-reliance and resourcefulness, readiness for any emergency
on land or sea, that characterized the type of men from whom the Homecroft
Reserves would have been bred, and the rough rural environment in which
they would have been reared, is strikingly described by S. R. Crockett in
his novel "The Raiders."
And in "The Dark o' the Moon," the sequel to "The Raiders," he tells of the
first of the struggles that were begun two centuries ago by the
Homecrofters of Scotland to preserve their immemorial privileges of
elbow-room and pasturage, as against the selfishness of the Landlord System
that finally prevailed. That system decimated Scotland of her bravest men
and left in their places hunting grounds and great estates to be sold or
rented to American Snobocrats, who are not fighting any of England's
battles in this war.
The early conflicts between the Landlords and the Homecrofters are referred
to, and the scene of one of these conflicts is so interestingly told by the
same author in his Book called "Raiderland," that the following quotation
is made from it:
"The water-meadows, rich with long deep grass that one
could hide in standing erect, bog-myrtle bushes,
hazelnuts, and brambles big as prize gooseberries and
black as--well, as our mouths when we had done eating
them. Woods of tall Scotch firs stood up on one hand,
oak and ash on the other. Out in the wimpling fairway
of the Black Lane, the Hollan Isle lay anchored. Such a
place for nuts! You could get back-loads and back-loads
of them to break your teeth upon in the winter
forenights. You could ferry across a raft laden with
them. Also, and most likely, you could fall off the
raft yourself and be well-nigh drowned. You might play
hide-and-seek about the Camp, which (though marked
'probably Roman' in the Survey Map) is not a Roman Camp
at all, instead only the last fortification of the
Levellers in Galloway--those brave but benighted
cottiers and crofters who rose in belated rebellion
because the lairds shut them out from their poor
moorland pasturages and peat-mosses.
"Their story is told in that more recent supplement to
'The Raiders' entitled 'The Dark o' the Moon.' There
the record of their deliberations and exploits is in
the main truthfully enough given, and the fact is
undoubted that they finished their course within their
entrenched camp upon the Duchrae bank, defying the
king's troops with their home-made pikes and rusty old
Covenanting swords.
"There is a ford (says this chronicle) over the Lane of
Grennoch, near where the clear brown stream detaches
itself from the narrows of the loch, and a full mile
before it unites its slow-moving lily-fringed stream
with the Black Water o' Dee rushing down from its
granite moorlands.
"The Lane of Grennoch seemed to that comfortable
English drover, Mr. Job Brown, like a bit of
Warwickshire let into the moory boggish desolations of
Galloway. But even as he lifted his eyes from the
lily-pools where the broad leaves were already browning
and turning up at the edges, lo! there, above him,
peeping through the russet heather of a Scottish
October, was a boulder of the native rock of the
province, lichened and water-worn, of which the poet
sings:
"'See yonder on the hillside scaur,
Up among the heather near and far,
Wha but Granny Granite, auld Granny Granite,
Girnin' wi' her grey teeth.'
"If the traveller will be at the pains to cross the
Lane of Grennoch, or, as it is now more commonly
called, the Duchrae Lane, a couple of hundred yards
north of the bridge, he will find a way past an old
cottage, the embowered pleasure-house of many a boyish
dream, out upon the craggy face of the Crae Hill. Then
over the trees and hazel bushes of the Hollan Isle, he
will have (like Captain Austin Tredennis) a view of the
entire defences of the Levellers and of the way by
which most of them escaped across the fords of the Dee
Water, before the final assault by the king's forces.
"The situation was naturally a strong one--that is, if,
as was at the time most likely, it had to be attacked
solely by cavalry, or by an irregular force acting
without artillery.
"In front the Grennoch Lane, still and deep with a
bottom of treacherous mud swamps, encircled it to the
north, while behind was a good mile of broken ground,
with frequent marshes and moss-hags. Save where the top
of the camp mound was cleared to admit of the scant
brushwood tents of the Levellers, the whole position
was further covered and defended by a perfect jungle of
bramble, whin, thorn, sloe, and hazel, through which
paths had been opened in all directions to the best
positions of defence."
"Such about the year 1723 was the place where the poor,
brave, ignorant cottiers of Galloway made their last
stand against the edict which (doubtless in the
interests of social progress and the new order of
things) drove them from their hillside holdings, their
trim patches of cleared land, their scanty rigs of corn
high in lirks of the mountain, or in blind 'hopes'
still more sheltered from the blast.
"Opposite Glenhead, at the uppermost end of the Trod
valley, you can see when the sun is setting over
western Loch Moar and his rays run level as an ocean
floor, the trace of walled enclosures, the outer rings
of farm-steadings, the dyke-ridges that enclosed the
_Homecrofts_, small as pocket-handkerchiefs; and higher
still, ascending the mountainside, regular as the
stripes on corduroy, you can trace the ancient rigs
where the corn once bloomed bonny even in these wildest
and most remote recesses of the hills. All is now
passed away and matter for romance--but it is truth all
the same, and one may tell it without fear and without
favour.
"From the Crae Hill, especially if one continues a
little to the south till you reach the summit cairn
above the farmhouse of Nether Crae you can see many
things. For one thing you are in the heart of the
Covenant Country.
"He pointed north to where on Auchencloy Moor the
slender shaft of the Martyrs' Monument gleamed white
among the darker heather--south to where on Kirkconnel
hillside Grier of Lag found six living men and left six
corpses--west towards Wigton Bay, where the tide
drowned two of the bravest of womankind, tied like dogs
to a stake--east to the kirkyards of Balmaghie and
Cross-michael, where under the trees the martyrs of
Scotland lie thick as gowans on the lea."
"Save by general direction you cannot take in all these
by the seeing of the eye from the Crae Hill. But you
are in the midst of them, and the hollows of the hills
where the men died for their 'thocht,' and the quiet
God's Acres where they lie buried, are as much of the
essence of Scotland as the red flushing of the heather
in autumn and the hill tarns and 'Dhu Lochs' scattered
like dark liquid eyes over the face of the wilds."
Well may England, as she looked over the battlefields of Belgium, and
mourned the thousands and tens of thousands of her brave men whose lives
have paid the forfeit for her heedlessness, and listened to the bombardment
of her North Sea coast towns by German battleships, and scanned the sky
watching for the coming of the aërial invasion her people so much feared,
have reflected on the pathos of those lines so often quoted:
"Of all sad things of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these, it might have been."
_Shall we learn by their experience, or shall we follow in England's
footsteps and have the same sort of an awakening?_
The same identical influences and traits of human character that drove the
Homecrofters from Scotland will be responsible for our failure to take
warning from England's lesson, if we do so fail. It is the disposition of
intrenched interests to grasp for more and more, and constantly more, that
has imperiled England's national life. The same grasping policy of the
intrenched interests in the United States now imperils the national life of
this nation in the future by the absorption of our national resources and
what remains of our public domain into private speculative ownership while
the toiling millions are crowded into the tenements. We could survive the
loss of what the intrenched interests have already taken if they would only
let loose on what is left and let Uncle Sam have a free hand to do with his
own as is best for all his people in places like the Colorado River
country. There the greater part of the land needed is still public land,
and speculators have not as yet acquired the water rights and power
possibilities.
England could not and the United States cannot maintain a great standing
army, but England could have established and maintained a Homecroft Reserve
of a million men in Scotland, and we can do it in the Colorado River
Valley, and other places where it ought to be done in the United States,
provided the land and water power can be saved from the clutch of the
speculators before they have so complicated the proposition as to
interminably delay it while Uncle Sam is getting back from them what ought
never to have been granted away.
England had the Scotch Homecrofters, and drove them from the homes of their
forefathers to make great estates. We have got to organize our Homecroft
Reservists and locate them, and train them, but that can be done.
There are thousands of the descendants of the Scotch Homecrofters serving
England to-day in the Canadian Contingent Corps in Europe, and doubtless
more than one of the crew of the Australian Cruiser that sunk the Emden
could trace his pedigree back to a Galloway Drover, a Solway Smuggler, or a
Border Raider. From the shielings of the Scotch Homecrofters there went out
into the world a race that has made good, wherever it has gone. Would it
not be well to think of that in the United States to-day and breed some
more of the same sturdy Homecroft Stock in this country, for patriotic
service either in peace or war?
It was the active out-of-door life that made the Scotch Homecrofters
strong. It is the sedentary, indoor life, or the monotony of factory work,
that is now sapping the vitality of our people and working havoc with our
racial strength. The pity of it is that we have a country where we can
reproduce the strong races of many different countries, if we would only
recognize that the necessity for doing it is the biggest and most important
national problem we have. We can match the country and the people where
nearly every big thing for the real uplift of humanity has been done in
recent years.
The Colorado River Drainage Basin has many characteristics like Australia,
where they have adopted a very similar system of Land Reclamation and
Settlement and the plan for Universal Military Service that is advocated in
this book. We can duplicate Switzerland in West Virginia. We can match
Belgium and Holland in Louisiana. We can do in Northern Minnesota what they
have done in Denmark. We have many of the same problems in California that
they have solved in New Zealand.
The fact should be carefully borne in mind, and never for a moment lost
sight of, that everything that is advocated in the plan proposed in this
book for national defense is something that would be chosen as a thing to
be done if it had been determined to carry out the most splendid plan that
could be devised for human advancement and national welfare in time of
peace in the United States. Such a plan, having regard only to times of
peace, would embody the entire plan advocated in this book. Even the
military training of entire Homecroft communities, so as to be prepared for
that emergency in case of war, is a discipline that would be most
beneficial to physical and mental development in time of peace, without any
regard to its importance in the event of war. It is most remarkable that
all this should be true, but the basic reason for it is that, after all,
the highest ultimate objective of national existence in time of peace is to
continually lift humanity to higher and higher levels of physical and
mental development; and to persevere until we attain the highest possible
type of rugged physical and mental strength in man and woman. When war
comes, the thing most needed is men--strong, vigorous, and hardy men; and
they are the ideal at which all plans for racial development should aim in
time of peace.
The Homecroft System of Life and Education eliminates the difficulties
arising from a reliance in time of war on untrained levies in a country
like ours, where so few are physically fit, without long training, for
soldierly service. The Homecrofter, earning his living by digging it from
the ground, is always strong and instantly fit for a soldier's work. The
Homecrofter lives under conditions where he is not a cog in a wheel--not a
part of any complicated industrial machine from which no part can be
withdrawn without derangement of the whole. He is an independent unit in
industry, self-sustaining, dependent on no one and no one dependent on him
but his own family. If he is called away for military service, the family
is able to conduct and cultivate the Homecroft, and gets its living
therefrom. No one is left in need, as would so often happen in other cases,
especially when State Militia might be called into real service. The
Homecrofter earns his living in a way that makes it practicable for him to
leave his accustomed vocation for a month or two every year for a period of
military training without any prejudice or loss to him in that vocation.
The more these advantages of the Homecroft Reserve System are studied from
a military point of view, the more their value will be appreciated. A rural
nation like Servia or Montenegro can be practically a nation of soldiers.
Every man of military age is always ready for service. The Russian Cossack
System accomplishes the same result. A nation of shopkeepers, commercial
clerks, and factory employees cannot be utilized in that way for military
service. The farming and rural population of the United States furnishes a
better hope for a Citizen Soldiery in case of war than our city population,
but in these days a farm has come to be really a factory, with complicated
machinery, requiring training to operate it, and a chronic shortage of
labor in busy seasons. Furthermore, rural population is as a rule so
scattered that it would not be possible in time of peace to perfect the
organization and give the Reservists the training necessary to prepare them
for service in time of war and have them always ready for immediate action.
In the Homecroft Communities a million men may be almost as close together
all the time as though they were in a Concentration Camp in time of war.
The organization of every company and regiment would be complete, officers
and all, constantly in touch and working together to promote peace and do
the work of peace but ready to do the work of war at any time if need be.
Officers in the Homecroft Reserve should be Homecrofters, trained in all
the military knowledge necessary, but also trained as Homecrofters and
getting their living that way.
It has often been said both of this country and of England that the country
must not be turned into an armed camp, like the Continent of Europe. The
fear is well grounded that if that were done the military spirit would soon
dominate the nation and plunge it into all the evils of Militarism, with
the danger always to be feared of an ultimate military despotism.
The plan for a Homecroft Reserve entirely eliminates that objection. A
great Homecroft community comprising a million acre Homecrofts, tilled and
lived on by a million trained Homecroft Reservists, in the Colorado River
Valley, would make no militaristic impression on the character of the
people at large in the United States as a whole. And the same statement
would hold good, if another similar Homecroft Reserve of a million men on a
million acres in each State were established in the Sacramento and San
Joaquin Valleys in California, another in Louisiana, another in Minnesota,
and another in West Virginia.
And yet this immense Homecroft Reserve, aggregating an army of five
million men in time of war, and ready at any time for instant service,
would make the United States the most potentially powerful military nation
in the world.
The lesson of this last great war will be learned, before it is over, by
all the nations of the world. That lesson is that _men_, men of reckless
daring and dauntless bravery, men utterly indifferent to their own lives
when they can be sacrificed to save the nation, men like the Belgian
gardeners who have fought for their homeland in this war, men like the
Japanese gardeners who threw away their lives against Port Arthur, men like
the Scotch Homecrofters who charged with the Scots Greys at Waterloo and
have fought through the fierce carnage of a hundred bloody battlefields to
sustain and build Britain's Empire Power; such men as the Minute Men of
Concord or the Southern Chevaliers who rode with Marion; such men as those
who fought with Jackson at New Orleans, whether they were Lafitte's
smugglers and pirates from Barataria Bay or Mountaineers from other state
or planters from the great sugar plantations of Louisiana, _men who, all
of them, are fighting for their homes and their country_, constitute a
defense that rises above all others in strength and is the most powerful
mobile force in modern warfare. Armed and equipped and organized they must
be, and fired with the desperate valor that can be born only of patriotic
devotion to a great cause; but when you have such men, and enough of them,
no modern machinery of war, or engines of destruction, or fortifications
can overcome them or stand against them. They are a force as irresistible
as the eruption of a mighty volcano.
Those are some of the things to set to the credit of the plan for a
Homecroft Reserve if needed for national defense in time of war.
Now measure their value in time of peace, for national defense against the
evil forces that are gnawing at the very vitals of our national existence
by degenerating our racial strength and physical and mental power as a
people.
There is a remedy for the physical degeneracy caused by congested cities.
That remedy is that the populations of such cities shall be scattered into
the suburbs where every family can have a home in which they can live in
contact with nature. It must be a home with a garden, where they can, if
need be, get their living from their own Homecroft. The Homecroft should be
the principal source of livelihood for every family,--the factory
employment, or the wage earned from it, should be secondary. This one
condition, wherever it is brought into existence for an entire community,
will end all labor conflicts and disturbances. The most pernicious and
poisonous influence in American thought to-day starts from the minds of
employers of labor who, sometimes perhaps subconsciously, think they must
control labor by having the working people always on the edge of the
precipice of starvation. The idea that the wage earner can only be
controlled by being kept in a position of personal dependence and
subserviency is as medieval, inhuman, and barbarously wrong as was the idea
that human slavery was necessary for the control of labor.
We have achieved religious liberty, political liberty, civil liberty, and
personal liberty, but industrial liberty remains yet to be accomplished.
Industrial slavery is the corner stone of our industrial edifice. It will
continue so as long as the lives of great multitudes of wageworkers revolve
around a _job_, and they know no other way to supply human needs but a
wage. Better men will give better service, and employers will get better
results, when every wage earner is located on a Homecroft from which he can
in any hour of need provide the entire living for himself and family.
That condition is the only permanent remedy for unemployment. When all wage
earners--all men and women--in this country are trained Homecrofters, able
to build a house and furnish it themselves by their own skill and knowing
how to get their living from one acre, whenever need be, the Homecroft life
will be the universal life of the working people, _and there will be no
unemployment_.
Unemployment will continue so long as there is a great mass of floating
labor, living from day to day on a wage while it lasts, and starving when
it stops. No scheme can be devised that will end the miseries caused by
unemployment, so long as that system of a floating mass of workers is
perpetuated. Human genius cannot prevent the ebb and flow of prosperity.
Eras of depression are inevitable. When they come, thousands will be out of
employment. Labor Bureaus, private or public, will not change that
condition, because they cannot create jobs where none exist. It is
philanthropy and not business for an employer to retain men out of sympathy
for them when he does not need their labor. Philanthropy is a poor
foundation on which to try to build any economic structure. Better by far
have every workingman a Homecrofter, whose labor is needed on his
homecroft, in home-garden or home-workshop, whenever it is not needed in
some wage-earning employment.
The labor of women and children in factories, aside from all other
considerations, is an economic waste, from the broad standpoint of the
highest welfare and prosperity for all the people. Any woman who is a
trained Homecrofter is worth more in dollars and cents per day or per week
for what she can produce from that homecroft than she can earn in any
factory. The same is true of every child old enough to seek factory
employment. Homecroft women and Homecroft children will never work in
factories, and whenever their labor cannot be had the labor of men will be
substituted and the whole world will be the better for it when that time
comes.
_But what has all this to do with a Homecroft Reserve?_
It has much to do with it.
Every community of Homecrofters created to enlarge and maintain the
Homecroft Reserve, would be a training school for Homecrofters. The term of
enlistment for the educational training furnished by these great National
Institutions for the training of Homecrofters would be five years. Each
organized community would be practically a separate Homecroft village.
Every one that was organized would make it easier to organize the next.
Public interest would grow and the popular demand would force the rapid
expansion of the plan as soon as its benefits in the field of the education
of the people were realized--just as happened in the case of the rural free
mail delivery.
Whenever the nation starts, as is advocated in this book, to immediately
establish a Homecroft Reserve of 100,000 in the Colorado River Country near
Yuma; 100,000 in the San Joaquin Valley in California; 100,000 in
Louisiana; 100,000 in West Virginia; and 100,000 in Minnesota,--500,000 in
all,--and gets that part of its work for national defense done, each
100,000 will be rapidly extended to 1,000,000. That will mean that there
will be 5,000,000 enlisted Homecroft Reservists being trained as soldiers
of peace as well as soldiers for war--being trained to produce food for man
with a hoe as well as to defend their country, if need arises, with a gun.
Every Homecrofter and his entire family will be _students_, learning to be
Homecrofters, all of them, and taking a five years' course. One fifth of
the total 5,000,000 would be enlisted and the same number graduated every
year.
_What would be the result?_
Every year, year after year, 1,000,000 trained, scientific
Homecrofters--trained in home-handicraft, and in fruit-culture,
truck-gardening, berry-growing, poultry-raising, and in putting all their
products in shape for marketing, whether in their own stomachs or in the
markets of the world--would be graduated from these Homecroft villages
comprising the Homecroft Reserves. Each would have had a five years' course
in that training--a year longer than required for an ordinary college
course and of infinitely more practical value to them than a college
course.
They would pay for the use and occupancy of the Homecroft, and for the
instruction they would receive, a sum sufficient to cover all the cost of
providing the instruction, and six per cent on the value of the Homecroft,
four per cent interest and two per cent to go to a sinking fund that would
equal the value of the Homecroft in fifty years. The government would get
back every dollar it invested, with interest, and make the profit between
the cost of the Homecroft and its fixed ultimate value of $1,000. That
value would be from twenty to thirty per cent profit on the original
investment by the government.
Every one of the 1,000,000 Homecroft families that would be graduated every
year would go out into the great field of our national life and activity,
looking first for a Homecroft and second for employment in some industrial
vocation.
_Now how many of our people are there who can be induced to sit down and
hold their heads in their hands until they have stopped the whirl in which
most of their minds are involved, long enough to seriously weigh the
difference in value to the country and to every industrial and commercial
interest of 1,000,000 such trained homecrofters, compared with the
1,000,000 untrained and ignorant foreign immigrants whom we have been
swallowing up every year for so many years in the maw of our congested
cities?_
One million trained Homecrofters, with their families, coming each year
into the social and industrial life of the whole people, scattering into
every community where labor was needed, would in a comparatively few years
solve every social problem and rescue the nation from its danger of
eventual destruction by human congestion, the tenement life, and racial
degeneracy. The graduated Homecrofters could never be induced to go into
the congested tenement districts. They would insist on living in Homecrofts
in the suburbs of the cities.
The nation ought to adopt immediately the whole system of establishing
Homecroft communities as training schools for 5,000,000 Homecrofters, from
which 1,000,000 would be graduated every year, without any regard to the
value of the plan for a Reserve for national defense. It should be done, if
for nothing else, to check the congestion of humanity in cities, create
individual industrial independence, end unemployment, end woman labor in
factories, end child labor, and insure social stability and the perpetuity
of the nation.
[Illustration: THE NEW EMPIRE OF THE WEST IN THE DRAINAGE BASIN OF THE
COLORADO RIVER--THE NILE OF AMERICA
Map showing the Drainage Basin of the Colorado River and the
Corrected Boundary Line and Neutral Zone between the United States and
Mexico.
The area of the Drainage Basin of the Colorado River is 265,000 square
miles. Japan has an area of 147,655 square miles. That is a territory
smaller than the area of the Colorado River Drainage Basin in Arizona and
New Mexico.]
CHAPTER IX
_In the Colorado River Valley in Arizona and California, and in the State
of Nevada, the national government already owns large tracts of land and
controls the locations required for power development. The work that could
be done immediately in establishing Homecroft Reserves on those public
lands, would reclaim vast areas of arid lands and develop water power that
would have a value far beyond the cost of the work. The financial
advantages to the government would be strikingly demonstrated by the work
done in those places. The danger of the occupation of California, Oregon,
and Washington by a Japanese invading force, before we could mobilize an
army on the Pacific Coast, would be entirely removed at a large and
steadily increasing profit to our government._
That may seem incredible to the average reader but it is none the less
true. Its truth arises from the fact that the enormous values in productive
land and in water power that can be created have as yet no existence. They
must be brought into existence by human labor, and large initial
expenditures. Those expenditures are too large to be possible through the
investment of private capital. When done by the national government, the
profits would be large in proportion to the large original investment.
The national government should, without any delay, declare its policy to
reserve to itself all water rights and water power resources in the
Colorado River Canyon. It should reserve for its own operations all public
land in the main valley of the Colorado River below the Canyon. It should
resume ownership of every acre of land in that territory that has been
heretofore located and is as yet unreclaimed or unsettled. That land should
be acquired under a system similar to the Australian system, by purchase
under an agreement as to price. If the acquisition of any of the land in
that way proves impracticable, private rights in the land should be
condemned exactly as would private rights in land needed for forts or
fortifications.
The rapid development and settlement of the Colorado River Valley along the
lines herein advocated is a measure of national defense and urgently so.
Every year's delay brings the converging lines of possible friction between
the United States and Japan closer together. Whatever system we may adopt
for national defense in that direction should be so quickly adopted that
the safeguards developed by it will be of rapid growth. This is more
particularly important if we look at the matter from the right standpoint,
and appreciate that what we do is done rather _to prevent war_ than to
insure victory in case of war. We will never have a war with Japan unless
it is the result of our own heedless indifference, apathetic neglect, and
inexcusable unpreparedness.
Immense tracts of land in the Colorado River Valley are still owned by the
national government which are capable of reclamation. Having resumed
ownership of all unsettled or unreclaimed lands in the valley now in
private ownership, the Government should lay out a great system for the
storage of the flood waters of the Colorado River in the canyon of the
river. The water should be utilized to reclaim at least five million acres
in California and Arizona.
The works necessary for the reclamation of at least a million acres of this
land should be carried to completion with all possible expedition. This one
million acres should be brought to the highest stage of reclamation and
cultivation, subdivided into Homecrofts of one acre each, and as rapidly as
possible settled by men with families who either already know or are
willing to learn how to get a comfortable living for a family from one acre
of land in the Colorado River Valley.
The Australian system of land reclamation and settlement should be applied
to the colonization of these acre-garden farms or Homecrofts. On every one
of them a house and outbuildings adapted to the climate should be built,
costing not over $500. That is all that would be necessary in the way of
buildings. Shade rather than shelter is needed and it is more important to
provide ways to keep cool than ways to keep out the cold. Life is lived
practically out-of-doors all the year round.
These Homecroft settlements should be organized in communities of not less
than one thousand each and, in advance of settlement, schoolhouses adapted
to the climate and all necessary roads and transportation facilities should
be brought into existence. The price to be paid for the right of occupancy
of each acre Homecroft during the five year period of enlistment in the
Educational System of the Homecroft Reserve Service, should be based, not
on the cost, but on _the full value of the reclaimed land and its
appurtenant water right plus the entire investment for house and community
improvements and the overhead expense of its development_.
No cash payment should be required from the settler. He should only pay the
fixed annual rental for use and occupation from year to year. The test of
his acceptability as an applicant would be his physical fitness for the
labor required in the development of that country, as well as for possible
military service in the event of war. The most important question would be
his ability, with the help of his family, and with the instruction that
would be given to all, to so cultivate and manage his acre Homecroft as to
produce from it all the food needed by the family throughout the year. The
first consideration in putting such a settler on the land would be the
willingness of himself and family to do that one thing above all others and
thereby demonstrate the practicability of the plan.
There would thus be brought into existence something rare among American
institutions--an independent and self-sustaining community of a million men
of military age with families from whom the mainstay of every family would
be available for military service without interference with complex
commercial or industrial conditions, and without in the slightest degree
subjecting the family to possible privation from lack of food, shelter, or
raiment. The question of raiment in the Colorado River Valley involves, if
necessity exists for economy, an expense so small as to be negligible. If
the men from such a community were absent for five years in military
service, the sale of surplus products and poultry in excess of the family
needs for food, that could be produced from the acre, would amply supply
the need of the family for clothes, and all their other necessary
requirements.
The character of the cultivation necessary upon such an acre would be
peculiarly adapted to the labor which would be available from the old men,
the boys, the women, and the children of the community. Each family would
continue to live in its accustomed home indefinitely. If the men of
military age were called on for military service, all rentals or other
charges against the land or for water maintenance or for instruction or
upkeep of roads and public works should be remitted during such a period of
actual service and borne by the national government. And in the event of
the loss of the head of the family in the service, the ownership of a
completely equipped and stocked homecroft should vest in the family in lieu
of a pension.
Not only should the Australian land system be made applicable to such
communities, so that each settler could secure his home without the
payment of any cash down, or anything more than the annual rental, but the
Australian or Swiss system of military service should likewise be adopted,
with reference to all these communities and the entire section of the
country embraced in the Colorado River Valley.
The plan has no elements of uncertainty or impracticability. The land is
there and the government already owns more than enough of it to carry out
the plan without the acquisition of any land now in private ownership.
The water necessary to reclaim the land runs to waste year after year into
the Gulf of California, and it never will be fully conserved and utilized
until the government takes hold and does it on a big interstate scale such
as can be done only by the national government. The latent water power
should be developed as fast as needed and perpetually owned by the national
government. Every available acre of land that can be reclaimed in the main
Colorado River Valley, and on the mesas adjoining it, should be acquired
and gradually settled under this plan by the national government.
Every new acre thus developed and settled would add to the economic
strength of the nation as well as contribute to its military strength. The
fact that this whole section of the country can be so readily adapted to
the Australian system of land reclamation and settlement, and also to the
Australian system of military service, is one of the strongest reasons for
locating the first demonstration of the advantages of such communities in
the Colorado River Valley.
Other reasons exist, however, which should not be lost sight of. There is
no other available section close enough to Southern California where a
force could be developed and maintained that could be brought into action
for the defense of Southern California quickly enough to make it safe to
rely upon its efficiency for that purpose with certainty. But an army of a
million men could be marched from the Colorado River Valley to Los Angeles
or any point in Southern California in much less time than troops could be
transported across the Pacific Ocean.
To this end a great Military Highway should be built across the Imperial
Valley to San Diego and thence to Los Angeles. Also another Military
Highway paralleling the Southern Pacific Railroad from Yuma to Los Angeles
with established stations for water supply on both routes at necessary
intervals. These highways would in time of peace be a part of a
transcontinental highway and would be constantly used by thousands of motor
car travelers. No system of railroad or trolley transportation should be
wholly depended on for the transportation of these troops. It should not be
possible to check their advance by any interruption of traffic resulting
from dynamiting bridges or tunnels or otherwise retarding or destroying
rail communication. The assured safety to Southern California which would
result from the proximity and readiness of the Homecroft Reserve would lie
in the fact that every soldier from the Colorado River Valley could
transport himself from his home to the point where he was needed, and be
sure that he would get there in time to meet any invading force.
It may be argued that a million men instantly liable for military service
to defend our Mexican border or defend Southern California against possible
invasion is more than would be needed. Right there lies the incontestable
assurance of Peace. Neither Japan nor any other nation would ever seriously
consider undertaking to land an army anywhere on the shores of the Gulf of
California or the Pacific Ocean for attack upon any section of the United
States if a million soldiers stood ready to step to the colors and shoulder
their guns and military equipment and give their services wherever needed
to repel such an invasion.
Every man living under this Swiss-Australian Homecroft System of military
service would be hardened and seasoned for the duties of that service. The
activities of his life and the digging of his living from the ground would
render him fit at all times for the heavy duties of soldiering. Not only
would he be hardened to labor, but he would be inured to the trying
climate of the Southwest, a climate so hot that people unaccustomed to it
would melt in their tracks if they undertook any active physical labor
under its blistering sun. Those who live in the climate, however, become
readily acclimated to it, and are as satisfied with and loyal to the
country as it is possible for human beings to be to the land of their home.
The plan of setting apart and developing this particular section of the
country as a source of supply and place for the maintenance of an adequate
citizen soldiery, would be strengthened by certain enlargements of the plan
that would be entirely practicable from every point of view.
The period of the year when the men could best be spared from their homes
for an interval of military training would be in the winter time. It would
be found advisable, in training the men of the Colorado River Valley for
military service, to move them once each year under military discipline to
an encampment for field maneuvers at some point in Nevada far enough to
the North to bring them within range of the cold winter climate to be found
in many of the valleys of Nevada. The best possible training these men
could have would be to march them with a full military equipment from the
Colorado River Valley to this winter training ground, and then march them
back again to their homes, once every year. That would be physical service
that would qualify them for the hardest kind of long distance marching that
they might be called upon to do in any event of actual warfare.
The stimulating effect of the cold winter climate of Nevada on men from the
hot climate of the Colorado River Valley would be of immense physical
advantage to them, besides hardening them to campaigning in a cold country,
as they would be hardened already by their home environment to campaigning
in a hot country. A military road should be constructed for such use all
the way from Yuma to Central Nevada, and then extended north to a point
where it would connect with an east and west national highway leading from
Salt Lake City to Reno, Sacramento, and San Francisco.
There are other details which should be worked out to complete the
comprehensive plan for the establishment and maintenance of such an
adequate and efficient citizen soldiery. The most important of these would
be the establishment of Institutions for Instruction--Homecroft
Institutes--which would train not only the children but the parents as
well, in every community subject to this system, in everything relating to
the high type of land cultivation that would be necessary to the success of
the plan. Coöperative methods in the distribution and sale of their surplus
products should also be adopted.
With careful study of all the questions involved relating to physical and
mental stamina and strength and its development in that climate, a racial
type could be developed with as much physical endurance as that of the
Mojave Indians who have lived for centuries in that country. In the old
days, before there were railroads or telegraph lines, their couriers would
run for sixty miles without water over the desert. They have powers of
endurance exceeded probably by no other living race of men.
The settlements thus contemplated in the Colorado River Valley should be
supplemented by the settlement, on Five Acre Homecrofts in Nevada, of as
large a force of Homecrofters as might be needed for the Cavalry Arm of the
entire Homecroft Reserves of the West and the Pacific Coast. This Homecroft
Reserve Cavalry force should be located under the Australian system of land
reclamation and settlement, and trained under the Australian system of
universal military service. They should be located upon lands now owned by
the national government or which could easily be acquired by it in various
communities of anywhere from 100 to 1000 each, in all the valleys of the
State of Nevada. That entire State has now a population of only 81,876
people, according to the census of 1910, and within its borders there are
from three to five million acres of unoccupied and uncultivated lands, or
land on which at present only hay or grain is grown, which could be
subdivided into five acre farms and settled under the Australian land
system by men with families who would get their living, each family from
its five acres, and be there all the years of the future instantly ready at
any time for military service whenever and wherever they might be called to
the flag.
It would be a very easy matter for the national government to coöperate
with the State of Nevada in such a way that every law of the State and
every plan for its development would fit in perfectly with this adequate
and comprehensive plan for the establishment of a great Reserve force of
Cavalry for the national defense. In Nevada, on the splendid stock ranges
of that State, the system could be so developed as to establish a cavalry
service large enough to serve all needs for that arm of the service, at
least when needed anywhere in the Western half of the United States.
The climate of Nevada and the stock ranges of that State will produce not
only a hardy and vigorous race of men but will produce a hardy and vigorous
race of horses as well. No horses in the world are stronger or better
fitted for cavalry service than those bred in Nevada.
Were this plan once adopted with reference to the State of Nevada, it would
not be possible for the national government to reclaim land and make it
ready for settlement, with a house on each five acre tract, fast enough to
supply the demand for such homes by industrious families who would
enthusiastically conform to all the conditions of Reservist service in
order to get the advantages and the benefits offered by such a system of
land settlement.
Five acres of irrigated land intensively tilled will support a family
anywhere in Nevada, but supplementing the five cultivated acres in the
majority of cases, grazing privileges could be made appurtenant to the five
acre farm which would materially increase its value and facilitate the
establishment of an adequate Cavalry Service to be drawn from these Nevada
communities. Each community of Homecrofters enlisted in this Cavalry
Service should have set apart to them from the public lands an area of
grazing lands which they could use through the formation of a coöperative
grazing association, such as have been so successfully conducted in some of
the other grazing States.
In this connection, it may be interesting in passing to call attention to
the similarity which this system of a Citizen Cavalry Service would have to
the Cossack system in Russia. The Russian government maintains this
invaluable cavalry arm of the Empire's military power without other expense
than to furnish the arms and ammunition for each cavalryman, supplemented
by a money payment when in service in lieu of rations.
Land grants have been made to the Cossacks, in return for which they must
give the military service which is the condition upon which the land grant
was made. The total area of all these grants is in the neighborhood of
146,000,000 acres and many of the Cossack communities have been made
wealthy from the timber and mines on their lands. These Cossack communities
are self-governing political bodies within themselves, in all their local
affairs. Their term of service begins with early manhood and ends only when
they have reached the age of sixty. Their mode of life gives them all the
physical vigor that could be attained by constant service, and when called
to the colors in time of war, they regard active service as something to be
much desired and it is entered upon with enthusiasm rather than regret.
The same conditions would hold good if a National Homecroft Reserve Cavalry
Service were established in Nevada. The farmer could leave his home without
prejudice to his family and would welcome with patriotic enthusiasm a call
to the colors. At the same time his home life and home environment would be
free from all the monotony and innumerable evils of life in a military
barracks or camp in time of peace. It would have all the variety of an
active, out-of-door, free, and independent rural life in one of the most
bracing and stimulating climates in the world, and in a State which, if it
were fully developed under this plan, would have a population of at least
five million citizens and their families, of the highest and most
intelligent class that could be produced on American soil.
This great Cavalry Service of our citizen soldiery in the State of Nevada
could be so quickly transported to and mobilized at any point on the
Pacific Coast between Seattle and Los Angeles, in the event of threatened
invasion, that no nation could by any possibility land an army on our
Pacific shores without being almost instantly confronted by an organized
force of citizen soldiers with its full quota of cavalry--not an untrained
mob of volunteers but hardened and trustworthy men of training and
experience in all that a soldier can learn to do in preliminary training
without actual warfare.
The fact that such an overwhelming and irresistible force was known by all
other nations to exist and to be available for immediate mobilization and
defense, would in and of itself prove the best assurance we could have
against the breaking out of a war which otherwise might well occur because
of our hopelessly inadequate regular standing army and our utter
unpreparedness so long as we have no adequate force of citizen soldiery.
A citizen soldiery is what we must undoubtedly have in this country, but it
must be a citizen soldiery trained and inured at all times in advance to
the real hardships of war. They must have the physical stamina necessary to
endure such hardships. They must be kept at all times physically fit by the
labor of their daily life and the occupations whereby they earn their
bread. They must be trained thoroughly and well in time of peace, as it is
contemplated they shall be trained under the military system of Switzerland
and Australia. That system would to a large extent be the model which would
be the guide for the creation of the Homecroft Reserve, except that under
the latter system the regular annual training period would be longer and
the training more thorough and complete. It would be sufficiently so to
make a reservist in every way the equal, so far as training goes, of a
soldier in the regular army.
The creation of a great Military Reserve under the plan proposed for a
Homecroft Reserve in the Colorado River Valley for the national defense
would require, for its complete and satisfactory fruition, the acquisition
by the United States of the territory through which the Colorado River now
flows from the present boundary line to the Gulf of California and
extending around the head of the Gulf of California.
The Gulf of California should be made neutral waters forever, by treaty
between the United States and Mexico, and this treaty should be agreed to
by all the nations of the world. The neutral waters thus created should
extend far enough into the open sea so that all commerce from the shores of
the Gulf of California or reaching the markets of the world through that
waterway from any of the vast interior territory embraced in the drainage
basin of the Colorado River, could at any time reach the ocean highways of
commerce without danger of being waylaid by the hostile ships of war of any
nation.
The territory which the United States should thus acquire from Mexico by
peaceful agreement and purchase should include the section of land lying
north of the most southerly line of New Mexico and Arizona, which runs
through or very close to Douglas, Naco, and Nogales, extended due west to
and across the Gulf of California and thence to the Pacific Ocean. The land
lying north and east of this line and the Gulf of California and Colorado
River should become a part of Arizona. The land lying north of the same
line and extending from the Colorado River and the Gulf of California on
the east to the Pacific Ocean on the west, should become a part of the
State of California.
A neutral zone should be created, south of and parallel to the boundary
line between the United States and Mexico, extending all the way from the
Pacific Coast to the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Rio Grande River.
This neutral zone should be controlled by an International Commission.
That commission should also have jurisdiction to determine any
controversies that might arise with reference to the Gulf of California.
They should have the same jurisdiction over that neutral sea zone as over
the neutral land zone. The jurisdiction of such an International Commission
might well be extended to cover all controversies that might arise between
the United States and Mexico, as to which it might be given full powers as
an International Commission of Conciliation or Arbitration, whenever such
disputed question was referred to it by the Executive or Legislative
authority of either government, and in all cases before an actual
declaration of war should be made by either country against the other.
Such an agreement would be of inestimable advantage to both countries, and
would more than compensate Mexico for the transfer to the United States of
the little corner of land which should be a part of Arizona and California.
It is of no possible benefit to Mexico to hang on to it. Its acquisition by
the United States is vital to its safe development. Its ownership by Mexico
puts the great population that will eventually live in the valley of the
Colorado River in the same position with reference to their national outlet
to the sea that the people of the Mississippi Valley would be in, if some
other nation owned the mouth of the Mississippi River, or that New York
would occupy if, for instance, Germany or France owned Long Island and
Staten Island and the territory immediately adjacent to the Narrows and
Long Island Sound on the mainland.
If the peace advocates in the United States, who limit their energies to
the establishment of the machinery for arbitration or conciliation, would
go one step farther and work out such a plan as that suggested above for
getting rid of a national controversy before it becomes acute, they would
render invaluable service to their country. The ownership of the delta of
the Colorado River and the head of the Gulf of California is one of those
certain points of danger that should be removed. The people of Mexico must
realize that, and the creation of a neutral zone and the neutralization of
the Gulf of California would be of infinitely greater value to Mexico than
the small tract she would transfer to the United States could ever be under
any circumstances. For Mexico to continue to hold it, creates a constant
danger of friction or conflict which would be entirely removed if it were
taken over by the United States.
The situation now is exactly as though one man owned the doorway to another
man's house. He could make no real beneficial use of it except to embarrass
the owner of the house. Such a situation can only result in controversy. Is
it not possible that the advocates of national arbitration and conciliation
or of an International Court can be induced to see this and use their
efforts to accomplish a great national benefit that is entirely
practicable? The plan above proposed would have all the merits claimed for
International Arbitration and Conciliation and for an International Peace
Tribunal. That is what the proposed International Peace Commission between
this country and Mexico would be, in fact, and its value and success being
demonstrated in one place where it could be practically put in operation,
it would be much easier to get the same plan adopted in wider fields by
other nations, and perhaps gradually evolve a world-wide system for an
International Peace Tribunal that way.
Another change that should be made in existing boundary lines to facilitate
the development of the resources of that country and its settlement by a
dense population, is shown by the map on the following page. State lines in
the arid region should have been located, so far as possible, where they
would have followed the natural boundaries of hydrographic basins. When
early errors can be now corrected with advantage to the people it should be
done. The development of Northern California would be facilitated by
separating it from Southern California at the Tehachapi Mountains. Then the
great problem of the reclamation and settlement of the 12,500,000 acres in
the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys could be solved much easier than as
the state is now constituted. It would also be to the advantage of Southern
California to be able to deal with its vast problems of irrigation
development without being complicated with those of Northern California.
[Illustration]
The accompanying map illustrates the lines which should be the boundary
lines of the States of California, South California and Nevada. The North
and South line between California and Nevada, running from Oregon to Lake
Tahoe, should be continued south until it strikes the crest of the Pacific
Watershed; thence it should follow the crest of that watershed southeast,
south and southwest, until it joins the Pacific Ocean between Santa Barbara
and Ventura. The southern boundary line of Utah should be extended until it
intersects the line last described at the crest of the Pacific Watershed.
The land north of the line so extended to the west and draining into
Nevada, formerly in California, and comprising Mono and part of Inyo
Counties should go to Nevada and all south of this east and west line
should go to South California. Nevada would gain by the exchange and so
would South California. A glance at the map will satisfy anyone of the
advantages to all the sections affected which would accrue from this
correction of present boundaries, and the creation of the new State of
South California.
CHAPTER X
_California is a remote Insular Province of the United States--just as much
an island as Hawaii, to all practical intents and purposes. It would be
more easily accessible from Japan by sea, in case of war, than from the
United States by land. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, now
nothing more than a large lake in these days of modern steamships. It is
bounded on the east and south by mountain ranges from which a thousand
miles of desert and the Rocky Mountains intervene before the populous
sections of the United States are reached. On the north inaccessible
mountains separate California from the plains and valleys of Oregon. There
are hundreds of places on its coast where an army could be landed. To reach
it from the north, mountains must be crossed. From the east, mountains must
be crossed. From the south, mountains must be crossed. From the west, the
gentle waves of the Pacific, in all ordinary weather, lap the sloping
sands which for nearly a thousand miles tempt a landing on so fair a
shore._
All this is true of Southern California, so far as its inaccessibility from
the east is concerned, but it is more essentially true of the Sacramento
and San Joaquin Valley. There you have a great bowl, fashioned by Nature in
such a way as to open invitingly to the warm and equable winds that come
from the Pacific and the Japan current, while on the north, west, and south
are high mountain ranges that protect from the blizzards that come out of
the north or the hot desert blasts from the south.
This peculiar conformation of the great central valley of California makes
its defense in case of war with any maritime nation a most difficult
problem.
The idea that the Pacific Coast of the United States or the coast of
California can be protected by a navy seems so utterly without foundation
that it is difficult to treat it seriously. Do those who delude themselves
with that mistaken dream recall that Cervera steamed in from the sea and
slipped into Santiago Harbor when practically the whole American Navy was
searching and watching for him?
If England cannot protect two hundred miles of seacoast from the raids of
German battleships, can we protect two thousand miles? Does anyone doubt
that if Germany had been so disposed, and her battleships had been
convoying fast transports laden with soldiers, she easily could have landed
them at Scarborough or anywhere along that part of the English Coast? Does
anyone doubt that Japan could do the same thing anywhere along the Pacific
Coast, particularly when the fact is borne in mind that in the summer,
often for weeks at a time, the Pacific Coast is enveloped in dense fogs
that are almost continuous?
Does anyone question that the instant war was declared Japan would seize
Alaska and the Philippines and the Hawaiian Islands, and cut off all
possibility of our navy operating anywhere except close to our few coaling
stations on the mainland? If so, they should surely read "The Valor of
Ignorance" by Homer Lea, not for the author's opinions, but just to get the
cold hard facts which our national heedlessness makes it so difficult to
get the people of this country to realize.
In "The Valor of Ignorance" the fact is pointed out with the most specific
detail that the number of transports Japan had, when that book was
published--1909--was a transport fleet of 95 steamers with a troop capacity
of 199,526 as against ten American transports. The author makes this
further comment:
"Should Japan embark on these two fleets an average of
two Japanese to the space and tonnage ordinarily deemed
necessary for one American, then the troop capacity on
a single voyage of these fleets would exceed three
hundred thousand officers and men together with their
equipment and supplies. That this would be easily
possible and would work no hardship on the men was
demonstrated by the Japanese winter quarters in
Manchuria during the Russian War."
Is there anyone so blind as to believe that if such an army of invasion was
started from Japan, convoyed by the Japanese navy, that we could find and
destroy that entire navy and then find and destroy ninety-five transports
before they could land their soldiers on the beaches along the peaceful
shores of California, Oregon, and Washington? The greater part of every
year they _are_ peaceful shores. That is why the name Pacific was chosen
for that great ocean.
The unique feature about this whole subject is that while the American
people are utterly indifferent, Japan, in an incredibly short space of
time, has equipped herself with everything needful for such an
invasion,--Navy, Transports, and Soldiers, probably the most perfectly
organized army in the world.
That is the situation of California from the side of the Pacific Ocean.
What is it from the land side?
If Japan contemplated an invasion of our territory, how many are there who
realize that just five dynamite bombs exploded in the right places would
block a tunnel on every one of the railroads leading into the Sacramento
and San Joaquin Valley?
The California and Oregon from the north.
The Southern Pacific from the south.
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, the Central Pacific and the Western
Pacific from the east.
Blow up one tunnel on each line and do the job thoroughly and well as the
Japanese would do it,--that's the Japanese way,--and it would be weeks and
perhaps months before one single train could be got in or out of
California.
We may rest assured also that the Japanese, when they undertook that job,
would not stop with blowing up one tunnel. They would blow up a dozen on
every one of the railroads mentioned, and bridges and culverts and
trestles. With a little dynamite, mixed with the reckless daring of the
Japanese, California could be made inaccessible to an army from the east,
except by sea, for a longer time than it would take to transport an army
from Asia to America.
No doubt the idea will occur to some that soldiers could be transported
from the Atlantic Coast to California through the Panama Canal in time to
meet such an emergency. But what would we transport them in? We have no
ships. And it is no sure thing that the Japanese would not get the Panama
Canal blown up and stop that channel of transportation, if war was begun
between them and the United States. It would require nothing more desperate
to accomplish it than we know the Japanese are ready for at any time the
opportunity offered--nothing more desperate than Hobson's feat at Santiago.
The Japanese are a farsighted people and war with them is an exact science.
They master every detail in advance. They proved that in their war with
Russia. There can be no doubt--not because they have any hostile intentions
towards the United States, but merely because it is a part of the duty of
their professional military scientists--that the plans are now made in the
war office at Tokio, for every detail of the whole project outlined above
for dynamiting every railroad into California and blowing up the Panama
Canal, in the event of war between the United States and Japan. And it is
quite probable that the men are detailed for the job and the dynamite
carefully stored away with which to do the job, if the necessity arose for
it.
_The Japanese do not want a war with the United States._
Neither did they want a war with Russia. But it is a part of their religion
to be prepared for war. It is the thorough Japanese way. Their way is not
our way. They take no chances. We do nothing else but take chances. Because
what we are doing or have done for national defense is as nothing.
All we spend on our navy is wasted, so far as any possible trouble with
Japan is concerned. If war came, it would come like the eruption of Mont
Pelée, so unexpectedly and quickly that escape was impossible. The people
of the United States, if we have a war with Japan, will awaken some morning
and read in all their morning papers that the Panama Canal has been blown
up, and that tunnels on all the railroads into California and the Colorado
River Bridges at Yuma and Needles have been blown up; that the 50,000 or
more Japanese soldiers in California have mobilized and intrenched
themselves in impregnable positions in the mountains of the coast range
near the ocean; that Japanese steamers have landed 10,000 more Japanese
soldiers to reënforce the 50,000 already in California; that those same
steamers have brought arms, ammunition, field artillery, aëroplanes, and a
complete equipment for a field campaign by this Japanese army of 60,000
men; that those Japanese steamers have landed at some entirely unfortified
roadstead in California: Bodega Bay or Tomales Bay or Purissima or
Pescadero or Santa Cruz or Monterey or Port Harford or any one of a dozen
other places where they could land between San Diego and Point Arena.
The Japanese making this landing would within two days make a junction with
the Japanese already in California. Then an army of occupation of 60,000
veteran soldiers is in military control of the Sacramento and San Joaquin
Valley.
How surprised the good people would be who have been so anxious to get
enough of the "inferior people" who are willing to do "squat labor" for
the American _owners of the country_, which had just been taken away from
them by the Japanese. Does it make any American proud to contemplate that
the whole situation above outlined is not only possible but that it is the
exact thing that would happen if we had a war with Japan?
Soldiers for defense? We could not get them there in time, and we cannot
maintain a soldier in idleness in a barracks in California for every
Japanese who is industriously earning his living in a potato field, doing
"squat labor" and thinking the while that he wishes his country would make
it possible, as she could so easily do, for him to own a potato patch
himself. Let no one imagine he is not thinking about it. The Japanese are a
farsighted and subtle people, with brains four thousand years old.
And with this army of occupation of 60,000 Japanese veterans in possession
of the great central valley of California, what would the Japanese do with
our coast fortifications and the big guns that cost so much money and were
designed to riddle Japanese battleships miles at sea?
Why, the Japanese would just laugh at them. They would not be worth taking.
If they thought they were they would take them, just as they took Port
Arthur and Tsing Tau. But they would not try to do that until they had
landed a couple of hundred thousand more veteran Japanese troops on the
Pacific Coast. Then they would take our coast fortifications from the land
side not so much by storm as by _swarm_.
What would the California Militia be doing all this time?
_It is better not to dwell on unpleasant subjects._
Most probably they would be defending San Francisco or Sacramento from
invasion while the Japs were intrenching themselves in the appropriate
places to control every pass across the Siskiyous or the Sierras or the
Tehachapi Mountains, making it impossible to get across those mountains
with an army, even though the army could first be got across the deserts to
the mountains.
In winter the Siskiyous and the Sierras would be made impassible by
Nature's snow and ice and avalanches, without any other defenses being
built by the Japanese.
But one of the first things the Japanese would do would be to organize a
force of aëroplane scouts with bombs to swoop out and down from their
mountain aeries and dynamite culverts and bridges on every railroad
approaching the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley. They could make it
impossible to keep open railroad communication in any way other than by an
adequate force to repel an aëroplane attack stationed at every bridge and
culvert across a thousand miles of desert. Once the bridges across the
Colorado River at the Needles and Yuma were blown up, the Southern Pacific
and Santa Fe would be out of commission for months.
What it would mean to get an army across the mountains into the great
central valley of California cannot be appreciated by anyone who is
unfamiliar with the stupendous canyons and chasms and the towering peaks of
the Siskiyou and Sierra Nevada Mountains. Those who toiled over them with
the Donner party could have told the tale to those who calculate on scaling
those mountains with an army in the face of Japanese batteries defending
every pass. It would be a task greater than the capture of Port Arthur to
capture one pass and get it away from the Japanese after we had got into
motion and started in with the job of reconquering California.
The difficulty of getting an American army into Southern California after
the Japanese had once occupied it, is described by Homer Lea in "The Valor
of Ignorance" in the following warning words:
"Entrance into southern California is gained by three
passes--the San Jacinto, Cajon and Saugus, while access
to the San Joaquin Valley and central California is by
the Tehachapi. It is in control of these passes that
determines Japanese supremacy on the southern flank of
the Pacific coast, and it is in their adaptability to
defence that determines the true strategic value of
southern California to the Japanese.
"Los Angeles forms the main centre of these three
passes, and lies within three hours by rail of each of
them, while San Bernardino, forming the immediate base
of forces defending Cajon and San Jacinto passes, is
within one hour by rail of both passes.
"The mountain-chains encompassing the inhabited regions
of southern California might be compared to a great
wall thousands of feet in height, within whose
enclosures are those fertile regions which have made
the name of this state synonymous with all that is
abundant in nature. These mountains, rugged and
inaccessible to armies from the desert side, form an
impregnable barrier except by the three gateways
mentioned.
"Standing upon Mt. San Gorgonio or San Antonio one can
look westward and southward down upon an endless
succession of cultivated fields, towns and hamlets,
orchards, vineyards and orange groves; upon wealth
amounting to hundreds of millions; upon as fair and
luxuriant a region as is ever given man to contemplate;
a region wherein shall be based the Japanese forces
defending these passes. To the north and east across
the top of this mountain-wall are forests, innumerable
streams, and abundance of forage. But suddenly at the
outward rim all vegetation ceases; there is a drop--the
desert begins.
"The Mojave is not a desert in the ordinary sense of
the word, but a region with all the characteristics of
other lands, only here Nature is dead or in the last
struggle against death. Its hills are volcanic scoria
and cinders, its plains bleak with red dust; its
meadows covered with a desiccated and seared
vegetation; its springs, sweet with arsenic, are
rimmed, not by verdure, but with the bones of beast and
man. Its gaunt forests of yucca bristle and twist in
its winds and brazen gloom. Its mountains, abrupt and
bare as sun-dried skulls, are broken with cañons that
are furnaces and gorges that are catacombs. Man has
taken cognizance of this deadness in his nomenclature.
There are Coffin Mountains, Funeral Ranges, Death
Valleys, Dead Men's Cañons, dead beds of lava, dead
lakes, and dead seas. All here is dead. This is the
ossuary of Nature; yet American armies must traverse it
and be based upon it whenever they undertake to regain
southern California. To attack these fortified places
from the desert side is a military undertaking pregnant
with greater difficulties than any ever attempted in
all the wars of the world."
Now after so easily taking California away from us because we stolidly
refused, like the English people, to heed repeated warnings, what would the
Japanese do? Southern California they would simply occupy with a military
force and continue to occupy it. Its irrigable lands in the coast basin are
already all reclaimed and densely populated.
_The Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys would be the paradise that they
would develop into a new Japan._
Already we have shown how they could duplicate the 12,500,000 acres of
irrigated and cultivated land in Japan in the drainage Basin of the
Colorado River.
They could do it again in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys in
California. There are 12,500,000 acres of the richest land in the world in
those valleys and within two years after they had taken possession of it
they would have several million Japanese reclaiming and cultivating it.
They would bring their people over as fast as all the steamers of Japan
could carry them. And long before we had got real good and ready to
reconquer California they would have peopled its great central valley with
a dense Japanese population who would fight us, the original owners of the
country, to defend their homes from invasion.
_What should the United States do to prevent all this?_
It should _immediately_, with just the same energy and expedition that it
would act if an invading Armada had actually sailed from Japan, buy 100,000
acres of land in the San Joaquin Valley that can be irrigated from the
Calaveras River and from the Calaveras Reservoir if it were built. It
should subdivide that tract into one acre Homecrofts and put 100,000
Homecroft Reservists on it. It should go to work and build, right now and
without any dilly-dallying or delay, the Calaveras Reservoir. Those 100,000
Homecroft Reservists should be set to work to build the Calaveras Reservoir
and the irrigation system necessary to irrigate that particular Homecroft
Reserve tract, and all the works necessary to protect the entire delta of
the San Joaquin River from overflow and protect the channel of the river
and broaden it below Stockton--"open the neck of the bottle" as they say in
that locality.
The government should go over onto the west side of the Sacramento Valley
and buy another 100,000 acres, and subdivide it into one acre Homecrofts
and enlist another corps of 100,000 Homecroft Reservists and put them on
that land. Then it should set them to work to build a great wasteway, to
temporarily carry off the flood waters of the Sacramento River--one that
will not split the Sacramento River but that will safeguard Sacramento from
that catastrophe. That work should be continued until it is finished.
Another 100,000 acres in the neighborhood of Fresno should be likewise
bought and another 100,000 Homecroft Reservists enlisted and located on it.
They should be set to work to open a navigable waterway to Fresno and dig a
great drainage canal that would also be a navigable canal, from Suisun Bay
to Tulare Lake.
Another 100,000 acres in the upper end of the west side of the Sacramento
Valley should be acquired and settled with 100,000 Homecrofters who would
work on the construction of the Iron Canyon Reservoir and other reservoirs
on the Sacramento River and its tributaries, and on a great main line West
Side Canal from the Sacramento River to the Straits of Carquinez.
Another 100,000 acres on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley should be
acquired and settled with 100,000 Homecrofters who would work on the
construction of the lower section of the West Side Canal from the Straits
of Carquinez to the lower end of the San Joaquin Valley.
The government should not stop there. It should, as soon as the necessary
legislative machinery can be evolved, go into the extreme southern end of
the San Joaquin Valley and acquire 500,000 acres of land for a Homecroft
Reserve of 500,000 families. It should build the works necessary to bring
the water to irrigate this land from the Sacramento River by the great
main-line canal from the river to the straits of Carquinez. Those straits
should be crossed on a viaduct and the canal carried on down the west side
of the valley, starting at an elevation high enough to cover the land to be
irrigated in the lower valley. The increased value of the million acres
would cover the entire cost of the works. Additional revenue could be
earned by the furnishing of water to other lands under the canal in the
Sacramento and also in the San Joaquin Valley.
The coöperation of the State of California would be gladly extended and
complete plans carried out for the reclamation of the San Joaquin Valley by
a great canal on the east side of the valley heading in the Sacramento
River near Redding, or at the Iron Canyon, and extending to the extreme
southern end of the valley, as recommended by the Commission appointed by
General Grant when President of the United States. That Commission was
composed of General Alexander, Colonel Mendel, and Professor Davidson,
three of the most eminent engineers and scientists of those days.
An aggregate area of 12,500,000 acres would, as the result of this policy,
be reclaimed and settled in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. Having
created a dense population ourselves in that country there would be no
unoccupied land to tempt the Japanese. And with 1,000,000 Homecroft
Reservists ready at any time to meet and repel an invasion, our occupancy
of the country would be assured forever.
There would not be room left for many Japanese immigrants, and if some of
them did come they would be in such a hopeless minority that no danger
would result from their being here. No condition could then be imagined in
the future that would create a possibility of Japan, even with all the
countless millions of China combined with her, being able to land on the
Pacific Coast an army large enough to stand a moment against a Homecroft
Reserve of a million soldiers from the Colorado River Valley and another
million from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys.
Whether it would be advisable to establish other Homecroft Reserves in
Oregon and Washington would depend largely on the attitude of mind of the
people of those States. If a few connecting railroad lines were built,
troops could be transported by railroads running north across Southern
California and Nevada to a connection with the railroads running down the
Columbia River to Portland. These railroads would all be east of the
mountains until they connected with the Columbia River Railroad and would
be free from danger of being destroyed by the blowing up of tunnels.
Of course it is a remote contingency that such a thing should ever become
necessary, but if it ever did, the Canadian border could be defended with
troops brought north through Nevada and Utah from the Colorado River Valley
to great concentration camps at Chehalis and Spokane, in Washington, Havre
in Montana, and Williston in North Dakota. As a matter of military
precaution, the necessary connecting links should be built as military
railroads, if nothing else,--such links as from Yuma to Cadiz, Pioche to
Ely, Tonopah to Austin, Indian Springs to Eureka, and from Battle Mountain
or Winnemucca as well as from Cobre on the Central Pacific line north to a
connection with the Oregon Short Line. The ease with which these
connections could be made, and the facility, in that event, with which
troops from the Colorado River Valley could be transported to any point in
North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, or Oregon, as well as their
[Illustration: Map showing Routes of Railway Transportation to
Concentration Centers for Troops of the Reserves for the defense of the
North Pacific Coast and Northern Boundary of the United States: 1, Albany;
2, Chehalis; 3, Spokane; 4, Havre; 5, Williston.]
proximity when at home in the Colorado Valley, to any point where they
might be needed along the Mexican border or in Southern California,
emphasizes the advantages of the Colorado River Valley as a location for
the first great Homecroft Reserve force of 1,000,000 men, supplemented by
another force of an equal number of men in the Sacramento and San Joaquin
Valleys in California. Once that was done, the question of the defense of
the Pacific Coast would be settled for all time, so long as this Homecroft
Reserve force was maintained and kept always in readiness for immediate
service.
CHAPTER XI
_The most dangerous aspect of the awakening of the people of the United
States to a realization of their unpreparedness for war, and the appalling
national disasters that might ensue from it, is the danger of creating a
military caste which would gradually absorb to itself an undue control of
Governmental authority and power, leading in the end to a military
despotism._
_Already the danger of this is seen in the assumption of the arbitrary power
over inland waterway development now exercised by the corps of Army
engineers and the Board of Army engineers, and the strong opposition
emanating from them against the adoption of any improved system of river
control that would protect the people from such appalling disasters as
those which overtook the Mississippi Valley in 1912 and again in 1913._
It is a fact capable of absolute demonstration that a large portion of the
damage resulting from those floods was due to the stubborn refusal of the
Army engineers to approve or adopt any plan for flood control that would
supplement the levee system by source stream control of the floods on the
upper tributaries, and by controlled outlets and spillways and auxiliary
flood water channels in the lower valley. It is very doubtful whether the
people of the delta of the Mississippi River will ever succeed in getting
protection against the recurrence of devastating floods until this baleful
influence of the Army engineers can be eliminated.
There are several reasons why this military control of inland waterways is
detrimental to the country. The military caste in the United States has
developed remarkable capacity for turning to their own advantage the
influence which their control over appropriations for river and harbor
improvements has centered in them. The Army engineers are wedded to the
present piecemeal system of appropriations, popularly known as the "Pork
Barrel" System. The reason for this is that it practically vests in them
the autocratic authority to determine whether the demands of the
constituents of any Senator or Congressman for some local river or harbor
improvement shall or shall not be granted. The representatives of the
people, whether they be Congressmen or Senators, must humbly bow to a
higher power and secure its gracious grant of consent or face the
disappointment of their constituents. It ought not to be difficult for
anyone with common sense, and with the most superficial knowledge of the
manipulation of social and political influences in shaping legislation to
understand the evils of this system, or the influence exerted through it by
the military caste which is adverse to the best interest of the people at
large.
The "Pork Barrel" System, with its piecemeal appropriations for local
improvements, without any underlying comprehensive plan, as long as it
prevails, will block the way to all efficient waterway development, or
protection from periodical damage by devastating floods. And it will never
be changed until popular indignation and protest breaks the stranglehold
that the military caste now has upon this class of legislation in Congress.
Their attitude in this whole field of public development is in humiliating
contrast with that of the Samurai of Japan when the whole system of
government of that nation was reconstructed and reorganized. The Samurai,
actuated by a patriotic and self-sacrificing desire to promote the general
welfare, surrendered entirely the privileges and prerogatives that they
held as a military class, and accepted a system which took from them all
power and submerged them in the mass of the people.
The military caste of this country apparently think only of their own
aggrandizement, and persistently oppose any modifications of an evil system
which would in the slightest degree involve a surrender of their autocratic
authority or official prestige and power for the general welfare.
In this stupendous field of national development, where immediate progress
is so vital to the people of the entire country, the stubborn opposition of
the military caste is the most serious obstacle in the way of a complete
coördination of all the departments of the government in the solution of
the whole problem of river regulation and flood control and the upbuilding
of a great inland waterway system.
Aside from that, there is an additional reason why the present system can
never be relied upon for a complete solution of the problem of river
regulation. This further difficulty lies in the system under which the
military caste is organized. The military system which prevails in all
matters administered through the Army, strangles all individual initiative
and opinion. It automatically subordinates every engineer in the military
service to the mental and personal domination of the chief of the Army
engineers, whoever he may be. All original and creative engineering genius
is muzzled or chloroformed as soon as it is born. If by any Caesarian
operation it chances to come into being it is promptly strangled.
Another incurable defect in the military system when applied to civil
construction and internal development of the resources of the country,
lies in the transfer of engineers from one assignment of duty to another
after brief periods of service. This plan is no doubt advisable and
possibly necessary in the military service. Its tendency is to bring all
Army engineers up to a common general level of ability and experience. It
destroys the peculiar originality and genius which can only result from
long experience and training in one of the many special fields for which
engineers must be developed in civil life.
This Army system might not work so badly if applied only to harbors and
harbor improvement work, but it destroys efficiency when applied to such
problems as those presented by a great river system like the Mississippi
River and its tributaries. An army engineer in charge of the Lower
Mississippi River district may have learned something of that problem, but
by the time he has learned it he is transferred to some other part of the
country and given a different problem to study. Another engineer is put in
his place, and by the time he in his turn has partially familiarized
himself with the problem he is likewise transferred. And so it goes on,
ignorance succeeds ignorance as fast as knowledge can be obtained.
A martinet at the head of the Army Engineering corps can stifle and render
useless to the country the most brilliant engineering genius if it blossoms
forth with any new theory or original suggestion. The Army engineer corps
is bound hand and foot by prejudice and pride of caste. The engineering
corps is a unit, arbitrarily dominated, intellectually and professionally,
by the chief of the corps. Nothing original can develop under such an
atmosphere of mental repression. The best engineering talent in the world
is suppressed and rendered valueless by that system of organization. It can
never solve the intricate and novel hydraulic problems presented by the
Mississippi River which, with all its tributaries, must be treated as a
unit in order to control its floods.
The people of the lower Mississippi Valley have for years endeavored to
secure the construction of controlled outlets and spillways, but their
most urgent efforts have fallen dead at the door of the Army engineers or
their associates or subordinates. The contractors profit financially by the
"Levees Only" system. The politicians share the power developed by the
local political machines which control the huge expenditures for levee
construction and maintenance. Both are ardent advocates and devotees of the
military caste system which perpetuates their powers, privileges, and
perquisites. The rest of the people, wherever they dare to entertain an
independent opinion, recognize that the Mississippi Valley can never be
rightly developed so long as the present "Levees Only" system continues to
prevail.
An engineering service composed entirely of engineers in civil life should
be created to take over all the work relating to river regulation, flood
control, and inland waterway construction, operation, and maintenance. The
opposition to such a system for the administration of civil affairs by
civil officials, instead of by the Army, has been based upon the plea that
nobody but army officers can be trusted to be honest in the expenditure of
the funds of the national government. Such an opposition is an insult to
the civil engineering profession of the United States and is completely
refuted by the splendid constructive accomplishments of the United States
Reclamation Service. No one questions the personal honesty of the Army
engineers, but their methods are enormously wasteful and without results
anywhere near commensurate to the amount of their expenditures. The system
championed and supported by them has resulted in the waste of about
$200,000,000. That vast sum, if it had been wisely and economically
expended, would have gone a long way towards creating conditions on our
river systems in which the water that now runs to waste in devastating
floods would have been put into the river at the low water season to float
boats on that would carry our inland commerce.
There never can be any escape from this carnival of waste and extravagance
and impotent and useless expenditure until the whole system of river
control and improvement is changed. Control of it must be taken away from
the Army and vested in civil control. Another reason for divorcing the Army
entirely from control of river work is that it seems impossible for an Army
engineer to recognize or reason back to original causes. He can see in a
flood only something against which he must build a fortification after the
flood has been formed. This is well illustrated by the blind adherence of
the Army engineers, or at least of their chiefs, to the delusion that
floods of the lower Mississippi Valley can be safeguarded against by the
"Levees Only" system of flood protection in that valley. They utterly
ignore the cause of the floods and therefore refuse to consider any system
of source stream control or of controlled outlets, spillways, and
wasteways.
Another illustration of this persistent adherence to mere local protection,
instead of safeguarding against an original cause, is furnished by the work
of the Army engineers in building the Stockton cut-off canal in California.
This canal was built ostensibly to prevent the Stockton channel from being
filled with sediment to the detriment of navigation. In fact it was built
to protect the city of Stockton from overflow and flood damage.
The first big flood that came filled up the cut-off canal and it is now
useless. It would be clearly unavailing to reëxcavate it, because it would
fill up again with the next big flood. The sediment which filled the canal
was gathered by the river after it left the foothills and tore its way as a
raging torrent through farms and fertile fields. It washed or caved them
into the river and carried down and deposited the earth material in the
cut-off canal.
The Army engineers, however, or at least their chiefs, had steadfastly set
their faces against reservoir construction for flood control. But for this
they might have built the great Calaveras Reservoir which would have
afforded complete protection for the city of Stockton against floods. By
controlling the flood at its source, storing the flood waters, and letting
them into the river below only in a volume not larger than the channel
would carry, all damage to the valley and to farms lying between the
foothills and the city of Stockton would have been avoided. No sediment
would have been carried into the Stockton channel to impede navigation. The
surplus flood water instead of running to waste would have been conserved
and held back until needed for beneficial use.
Any such plan as this would have been contrary to all the precedents and
theories of the military engineers. All the damages resulting from failure
to adopt it merely illustrate the necessity of escaping from those
precedents and theories, and the pride of opinion which clings to them with
such desperate tenacity. That escape must be accomplished, if we are ever
to get river regulation and flood protection in this country. Stockton will
never get it until the Calaveras Reservoir has been built, and no
flood-menaced section of the country will get protection until it is
afforded to it by engineering and constructive forces dominated by the
civil and not by the military authority of the Government.
The whole training of an Army engineer is wrong, when it comes to dealing
with river problems and the control of floods which can only be safeguarded
against by controlling the remote causes which result in the formation of
the flood. The idea of preventing the formation of floods by controlling
those original causes, preserving forest and woodland cover, preserving the
porosity of the soil, slowing up the run-off from the watershed, or holding
back the flood waters in reservoirs or storage basins, seems to be beyond
the scope of the powers of conception and construction of the military
engineers of the United States Army. They see only results, and seem unable
to comprehend original causes. Not only this, but they also oppose, by all
the political arts in which the Army engineers are so well versed, every
proposition to coördinate the work of the Army engineers in the field of
channel work and local flood defense, with the work of other departments of
the national government. Every department of the national government must
be coördinated which deals with water control, or with any beneficial use
of water that would check rapid run off and hold back the flood water on
the watershed where it originated, and in that way prevent the formation of
a destructive flood.
The entire willingness of the Army engineers to subordinate the welfare of
the people in every flood-menaced valley to the stubborn determination of
the military caste to retain and broaden their own powers and privileges in
this one field of action, shows what might be expected from any increase in
the members of that caste, or any enlargement of their control over the
civil affairs of the country.
The military caste in the United States will never approve any plan for
national defense that does not center in and radiate from them. They will
oppose it unless it broadens their influence and power, and imbeds it more
strongly in the foundations of the Government. A plan such as is advocated
in this book, will never have their coöperation, support, or endorsement,
for the very simple reason that its primary object would be to remove the
original cause of war and to contribute to the lessening of the power and
prestige of the Army. The fact that it would at the same time supply the
first and greatest need in the event of war--the need for toughened and
trained men who could and would fight and dig trenches as well as seasoned
soldiers--would gain no favor for the plan in the eyes of our military
caste. The development of that system and the expenditures to be made for
that purpose and the control of the men enlisted in it would not be vested
in the War Department.
The military caste in this and every country is trained to regard its
profession as one whose duty it is to accomplish results by brute force and
human slaughter. Its only conception of a soldier is a man-killing machine,
whose chief use in time of peace is to serve as a basis for appropriations
to sustain a military establishment with all its multitudinous
expenditures. Their conception of war is that it is an inevitable orgy of
human slaughter, against which humanity is powerless to protect itself.
That a great force should be organized for patriotic service under civil
control instead of military domination, to battle against the destroying
forces of Nature, and subjugate and control them for the advancement of
humanity and all the arts and victories of peace, runs counter to every
fiber of being of the military caste. And yet, none but the most
superficial student of history and humanity can fail to realize the
necessity for such an army of peace in this country. It is certainly true
that wars will never cease until the inspiration and patriotism and
national ideals developed by such a peaceful conquest of the forces of
Nature has been substituted for the tremendous stimulus which the human
race has in the past drawn from armed conflicts between nations. And the
fact must be clearly recognized that in this way a force can be provided
that will be instantly available to take the place of seasoned soldiers at
any moment in the event that this nation should be drawn into a war of
defense or for the maintenance of any great principle of human rights or
justice to humanity.
We might be forced into a war within a year and we might succeed in
preserving the peace forever. No man can tell, because no human mind can
forecast the future or predict what events may occur that may be beyond our
power to control, and which might force us into a war. We do know, however,
that the fight against the floods of the Mississippi River, and the fight
against the great storms from the Gulf of Mexico, must go on year after
year through all the centuries to come during which man continues to
inhabit the Delta of the Mississippi River.
The memory of the great disaster to the city of Galveston, and the memory
of the great floods of the Mississippi River in 1912 and 1913, are still
fresh in the minds of the people. The defense of that part of our common
country against such catastrophes in the future is worthy of the same
patriotic energy and the same adequate expenditure that would be necessary
to defend them against an armed invasion from Mexico or by any nation of
the world.
Were such defense afforded, results would be obtained of such enormous
benefit to the United States in time of peace, without any regard to its
relation to national defense in time of war, that to fail to do it would be
as stupid as it would have been to fail to take the gold from the placer
mines of California.
The gateway from the Gulf of Mexico to the great central valley of this
country opens into a region so vast that the area comprised within the
watershed of the Mississippi and its tributaries embraces 41 per cent of
the entire United States. This gateway opens into a great waterway system
capable of being made continuously navigable all the year around through
20,000 miles of navigable waterways and commerce-carriers.
The gateway from the Gulf opens to a country of greater potential
agricultural wealth than any other section of the earth's surface of the
same area. The lower Mississippi Valley has well been styled the
"Sugar-Bowl" of the continent. The State of Louisiana alone is larger in
area by 10,000 square miles than the combined area of Belgium, Holland, and
Denmark. It is capable of sustaining a larger population and producing
vastly more wealth than those three countries combined.
If you draw a line straight north from the southernmost point of Texas to
the northern line of Oklahoma, and then turn and go straight east,
projecting the northern line of Oklahoma past Cairo, Illinois, to the
Tennessee River, following up the Tennessee River to the northeast corner
of Mississippi, and then follow the eastern boundary line of Mississippi to
the Gulf of Mexico, you have included within these extreme boundaries a
territory as large as the whole German Empire. It is a territory possessing
greater natural wealth and possibility of development than the German
Empire, _provided_ the great problems of water control and river regulation
are solved in such a way as to promote the highest development of this
region for the benefit of humanity, and _provided further_ that the Coast
region of this territory is protected not only from the floods of the
river, but from the storms originating in the Gulf of Mexico. Protection
from those storms requires the construction of a great dike similar to the
dikes of Holland that will hold out the waters of the Gulf not only at
their normal height, but will also hold them back when they attain the
abnormal height which at rare intervals results from the hurricanes or
great storms from the Gulf of Mexico, such as that which overwhelmed
Galveston.
Lafcadio Hearn, in "Chita," has described a Gulf Storm better than it will
ever again be described. He prefaced the story of that storm with a picture
of the havoc wrought by Nature's forces--the ceaseless charging of the
"Ocean's Cavalry," that is quoted because it so clearly portrays the
necessity for bulwarks of defense built in the spirit of military defenses.
"On the Gulf side of these islands you may observe that
the trees--when there are any trees--all bend away from
the sea; and, even of bright, hot days when the wind
sleeps, there is something grotesquely pathetic in
their look of agonized terror. A group of oaks at
Grande Isle I remember as especially suggestive: five
sloping silhouettes in line against the horizon, like
fleeing women with streaming garments and wind-blown
hair--bowing grievously and thrusting out arms
desperately northward as to save themselves from
falling. And they are being pursued indeed;--for the
sea is devouring the land. Many and many a mile of
ground has yielded to the tireless charging of Ocean's
cavalry; far out you can see, through a good glass, the
porpoises at play where of old the sugarcane shook out
its million bannerets; and shark-fins now seam deep
water above a site where pigeons used to coo. Men build
dikes; but the besieging tides bring up their
battering-rams--whole forests of drift--huge trunks of
water-oak and weighty cypress. Forever the yellow
Mississippi strives to build; forever the sea struggles
to destroy;--and amid their eternal strife the islands
and the promontories change shape, more slowly, but not
less fantastically, than the clouds of heaven.
"And worthy of study are those wan battle-grounds where
the woods made their last brave stand against the
irresistible invasion,--usually at some long point of
sea-marsh, widely fringed with billowing sand. Just
where the waves curl beyond such a point you may
discern a multitude of blackened, snaggy shapes
protruding above the water,--some high enough to
resemble ruined chimneys, others bearing a startling
likeness to enormous skeleton-feet and
skeleton-hands,--with crustaceous white growths
clinging to them here and there like remnants of
integument. These are bodies and limbs of drowned
oaks,--so long drowned that the shell-scurf is
inch-thick upon parts of them. Farther in upon the
beach immense trunks lie overthrown. Some look like
vast broken columns; some suggest colossal torsos
imbedded, and seem to reach out mutilated stumps in
despair from their deepening graves;--and beside these
are others which have kept their feet with astounding
obstinacy, although the barbarian tides have been
charging them for twenty years, and gradually torn away
the soil above and beneath their roots. The sand
around,--soft beneath and thinly crusted upon the
surface,--is everywhere pierced with holes made by a
beautifully mottled and semi-diaphanous crab, with
hairy legs, big staring eyes, and milk-white
claws;--while in the green sedges beyond there is a
perpetual rustling, as of some strong wind bearing
among reeds: a marvellous creeping of 'fiddlers,' which
the inexperienced visitor might at first mistake for so
many peculiar beetles, as they run about sideways, each
with his huge single claw folded upon his body like a
wing-case. Year by year that rustling strip of green
land grows narrower; the sand spreads and sinks,
shuddering and wrinkling like a living brown skin; and
the last standing corpses of the oaks, ever clinging
with naked, dead feet to the sliding beach lean more
and more out of the perpendicular. As the sands
subside, the stumps appear to creep; their intertwisted
masses of snakish roots seem to crawl, to writhe,--like
the reaching arms of cephalopods.... Grand Terre is
going: the sea mines her fort, and will before many
years carry the ramparts by storm. Grande Isle is
going,--slowly but surely: the Gulf has eaten three
miles into her meadowed land. Last Island has gone! How
it went I first heard from the lips of a veteran pilot,
while we sat one evening together on the trunk of a
drifted cypress which some high tide had pressed deeply
into the Grande Isle beach. The day had been tropically
warm; we had sought the shore for a breath of living
air. Sunset came, and with it the ponderous heat
lifted,--a sudden breeze blew,--lightnings flickered in
the darkening horizon,--wind and water began to strive
together,--and soon all the low coast boomed. Then my
companion began his story; perhaps the coming of the
storm inspired him to speak! And as I listened to him,
listening also to the clamoring of the coast, there
flashed back to me recollection of a singular Breton
fancy: that the Voice of the Sea is never one voice,
but a tumult of many voices--voices of drowned
men,--the muttering of multitudinous dead,--the
moaning of innumerable ghosts, all rising, to rage
against the living, at the great Witch-call of
storms...."
The defense of the Gulf gateway of the United States of America not only
against Nature's forces, whether coming in the form of an invasion by a
mighty flood from the North, or the invasion of a great destroying storm
wave from the South, must be accomplished by the adoption of a plan for the
protection of that country similar to that proposed for the organization of
a Homecroft Reserve in the Colorado River Valley and in the Sacramento and
San Joaquin Valleys and in the State of Nevada.
The national government should immediately acquire not less than 1,000,000
acres of land bordering on the Gulf of Mexico and lying between Bayou
Lafourche and Atchafalaya Bay and the Atchafalaya River. Then a great dike
should be built by the national government from Barataria Bay, following
the most practicable course along the shores of the Gulf to and along the
eastern shore of the Atchafalaya Bay and River to Morgan City. Thence this
great dike should skirt the northeastern shore of Grand Lake to the
northern end of that lake. From there it should be continued north to the
Mississippi River to a connection with that river near the headwaters of
the Atchafalaya River.
The material necessary for the construction of this great embankment and
protecting levee from the Gulf north to the Mississippi River should be
taken entirely from the eastern side of the embankment, and the channel
thus constructed should be enlarged sufficiently to build an adequate
protecting levee on the east bank of the channel. The artificial channel
thus constructed should be so large as to constitute a controlled outlet
and auxiliary flood channel which, with the ten mile wide Atchafalaya
wasteway, would take off all of the flood flow of the Mississippi River at
that point in excess of the high water level as it rests against the levees
in all ordinary flood years. The purpose of this outlet and wasteway would
be to make it impossible that in any year of unusual floods the levees or
banks should be subjected to any greater hydrostatic pressure than in
ordinary years. The point where this controlled outlet would leave the
river would be approximately the same place where the great Morganza
Crevasse broke through the levee and opened a way for the flood to sweep
with its devastating force through the country between the Mississippi
River and the Gulf of Mexico.
[Illustration: Map of Louisiana, showing the Great Controlled Outlet at Old
River and the Atchafalaya Wasteway, Auxiliary Flood Water Channels and
Canals; and showing also the Spillways and Controlled Wasteways from the
Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne, and the Great Gulf
Coast Dike.]
Ten miles west of the great north and south embankment above described, on
a north and south line which would pass close to the town of Melville in
Louisiana and follow the west bank of the Atchafalaya River for some
distance below Melville, another great embankment should be built,
paralleling the one previously described. The material for the construction
of this second embankment should be taken from its western side, thus
forming a channel which should be used both as a drainage outlet and a
navigable canal extending from the Bayou Teche to the Red River. At the
point of its junction with the Red River, locks should be constructed which
would prevent any of the floods of the Red River from ever entering or
passing through this navigable drainage canal. From that point another
great embankment should be extended by the most practicable route to the
west or northwest, where a junction could be formed with the high land in
such a way as to turn all the surplus flood drainage from the Red River and
all other rivers to the north into the great ten-mile wide wasteway lying
between the two embankments and running south from the mouth of the Red
River or from Old River to Grand Lake.
The volume of water that would make a flood twenty feet deep in a channel a
mile wide could be carried through this wasteway with a flow of only about
two feet in depth, and two great benefits thereby attained:
First, the cutting power of the water could be controlled and its danger
from that cause obviated.
Second, the sediment carried by the water could be settled across a strip
ten miles wide, which could be thereby brought to a level and its fertility
enormously enriched by these sedimentary deposits which it would receive
only in years of great floods. In the meantime and in other years the land
could be used for meadow, or for the production of crops which could be
grown after the danger of overflow in any season had passed.
This ten-mile wide wasteway, supplemented by the auxiliary flood water
channel paralleling its eastern embankment on the east, would completely
control and carry to the Gulf all the excess flood water in years of
extreme floods, and hold the high water level of the Mississippi River from
Old River to the Gulf at an absolutely fixed level above which the river
would never rise.
The ten-mile wide wasteway could be extended north from the mouth of Red
River to the bluffs at Helena. Then from Helena south the entire
Mississippi Valley would be protected against danger from floods in the
Mississippi River in the extraordinary flood years which may come only once
in a generation, and yet may come in any two consecutive years as they did
in 1912 and 1913. If this ten-mile wide wasteway, with its auxiliary flood
water channel paralleling it, between it and the river, were constructed
from Helena to the mouth of the Red River, and thence to the Gulf of
Mexico, and in turn supplemented by source stream control of the floods of
the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers, the lowlands of the
Mississippi Valley could be made as safe from overflow or damage by
devastating floods as the highlands of the Hudson River or the dry plains
of eastern Colorado. The entire area of the Mississippi River Valley now
subject to overflow is about 29,000 square miles. This is an area one-third
larger than the entire cultivated area of the Empire of Japan, which
sustains a farming population of 30,000,000 people. The lands of the
Mississippi River Valley are infinitely richer and of greater natural
fertility than the farming lands of Japan. Every acre of the rich
sedimentary soil of the Delta of the Mississippi River would, if
intensively cultivated, produce food enough to feed a family of five, with
a large surplus over for distribution to the world's food markets.
The entire 1,000,000 acres to be acquired by the national government in
Louisiana should be immediately acquired within the area bounded on the
south by the great embankment along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and on
the west by the great wasteway and auxiliary flood channel to be built from
the mouth of Red River to Atchafalaya Bay and on the north and east by the
Mississippi River.
This entire territory would be so absolutely and completely protected from
all possibility of overflow by the proposed system of protection from
floods or overflow and from Gulf Storms that any part of it could be safely
subdivided into acre-garden-homes or Homecrofts. Every acre would be
adequate for the support of a family when properly reclaimed, fertilized,
and intensively cultivated. The variety of food that would be available for
the people living on these one million Homecrofts would be greater probably
than would be within the reach of people living in any other section of
the world. The mild and equable climate would make practicable a successful
growth of every possible product of garden, orchard, or vineyard, including
oranges and grape-fruit. Proximity to the Gulf and a network of canals that
would lace and interlace the country in every direction would furnish them,
at trifling cost or none at all, with the most delicious sea-foods, fish,
crabs, shrimps, crayfish, and oysters without limit. Every canal and bayou
would furnish its quota of fish and the oyster beds of the Louisiana coast
are capable of almost limitless extension.
In addition to the cultivation of their Homecrofts for food from the
ground, the Homecrofters enlisted in the Louisiana Homecroft Reserve would
be afforded abundant occupation in catching or producing sea-food for
themselves as well as for export. Anyone not familiar with the country can
form no adequate conception of the stupendous possibilities of this bayou
and Gulf coast country along this line of production and development.
More than this, the luggermen of the bayous and the Gulf are the best
coast-wise and shallow sea sailors in the world, and the bays and bayous of
Louisiana, if inhabited by a dense population, would once again breed a
race of seafaring people--sailors and fishermen--to man our navy or
merchant marine.
The complete adoption of the plan advocated for the reclamation and
settlement of these swamp and overflowed lands, and the establishment there
of a perpetual reserve available for military service whenever needed of a
million seasoned and hardened citizen soldiers, involves doing nothing that
has not already been done by other nations of the world.
Holland has built dikes as defenses against the inroads of the ocean
greater even than those proposed in Louisiana, and the plans of Holland for
reclaiming for agriculture vast areas of land now buried beneath the waters
of the Zuyder Zee are much bolder in conception and more difficult of
accomplishment.
Australia and New Zealand have both demonstrated the practicability and
proved the success of a national policy of land acquisition and
colonization. What Australia has done in the reclamation and settlement of
her deserts, we can do not only on our deserts but also in our swamps.
Switzerland and Australia have both proved the practicability of a military
system similar to that which it is proposed to establish for the defense of
the Gulf Gateway of this nation. The plan urged for Louisiana would in many
respects be an improvement upon a plan which made it necessary to call men
from commercial or industrial employment for military service.
CHAPTER XII
_The result of the adoption of the Homecroft Reserve System would be that
this generation would bequeath to future generations a country freed
forever from the menace of militarism or military despotism, and also freed
from the burdens of military and naval establishments. At the same time,
the United States would be safeguarded against internal dangers and made
impregnable against attack or invasion by any foreign power. Every
patriotic citizen of the United States should have that thought graven on
his mind. No other plan can be devised that will accomplish those results._
The reasons why they will be accomplished by the Homecroft Reserve System
may be briefly summarized.
From the standpoint of national defense, and regarding war as a
possibility, the following are the advantages of the system:
_First:_ The maintenance of a Homecroft Reserve of 5,000,000 trained
soldiers would ultimately cost the government nothing. The entire
investment required for the establishment of the Reserve would be repaid
with interest by the revenues from the Homecroft rentals, and ultimately a
revenue of $300,000,000 would be annually returned to the national
government in excess of the entire expense of the maintenance of the
Reserves.
_Second:_ There would be no burden of a pension roll as the result of
actual service by the Homecroft Reservists in the event of war. The Life
Insurance System embodied in the general plan for a Homecroft Reserve would
be substituted for a pension system.
_Third:_ Every requirement of necessary military training for actual
service in the field would be provided. Each Department of the Homecroft
Reserve, embracing a million men, would be concentrated and fully
organized, with annual field maneuvers.
_Fourth:_ The whole body of the Homecroft Reserve would be men physically
hardened and trained to every duty required of a soldier in actual
warfare. They would be inured to long marches and to every hardship of a
campaign in the field. They would at all times be mobilized and ready for
instant service.
_Fifth:_ The whole 5,000,000 men in the Homecroft Reserve could be sent
into active service without calling a man from any industry or commercial
employment where he might be needed. The United States could put an army of
five million men in the field at a moment's notice, without the slightest
interference with commerce, manufacturing, or any branch of industry.
_Sixth:_ No length of actual field service would impose any hardship or
privation on the families of any of the Homecroft Reservists. Each family
would continue to occupy and get its living from the Homecroft during the
absence of the soldier of the family. The routine of the family and
community life would continue undisturbed.
For the first fifty year period the cost of maintaining our present
standing army of less than _100,000_ men will be _five billion dollars_.
_During that same period_ the revenues from the Homecroft Reserve rentals
would repay the entire investment required for the establishment and
maintenance of the Reserve, and the ultimate cost to the government of the
maintenance for fifty years of a reserve of _five million men_ would be
_nothing_.
For the second fifty year period, the net revenues from the Homecroft
Reserve rentals, over and above the entire cost of the maintenance of the
Reserve, would be fifteen billion dollars,--$300,000,000 a year every year
for fifty years,--more than enough to cover the entire expense of our
standing Army and Navy, as at present maintained.
In other words, the profit to the government from establishing a Military
Reserve which would be at the same time a great _Educational Institution_
for training Citizens as well as Soldiers, and a Peace Establishment for
Food Production, would be large enough to cover the entire cost of the
nation's regular Military and Naval Establishments. For all time
thereafter, the country would be relieved from the heavy financial burdens
of maintaining them. The revenues that the regular Military and Naval
Establishments will otherwise absorb could be diverted to building internal
improvements, highways, waterways, railways, reclaiming lands, safeguarding
against floods, preventing forest fires, planting forests, and supporting a
great national educational system that would make the Homecroft Slogan the
heritage of every child born to citizenship in the United States of
America:
_Every child in a Garden,
Every mother in a Homecroft, and
Individual Industrial Independence
For every worker in a
Home of his own on the Land._
From the standpoint of peace, if there should never be another war, and as
a means of national defense against the dangers that menace the country
from within--civil conflict, class conflict, social upheaval, racial
deterioration, and a degenerated citizenship--the advantages of the
Homecroft Reserve System may be epitomized as follows:
_First:_ Every Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlement of 100,000 acres--100,000
Reservists--100,000 families, created by the national government, will be a
model for an industrial community which will demonstrate that the cure for
city congestion is the Homecroft Life in the suburbs or in nearby Homecroft
Villages.
_Second:_ It will further demonstrate that the physical and mental
deterioration, poverty, disease, crime, human degeneracy, and racial decay
now being caused by the tenement life can be prevented by the Homecroft
Life.
_Third:_ Child labor and Woman labor in factories will be proved to be
economic waste because of the larger value of that labor at home devoted to
producing food for the family from garden and poultry yard, and preparing
and preserving it for home consumption. It will be demonstrated that no
child or woman can be spared from a Homecroft for work in a factory.
_Fourth:_ The fact will be established that the remedy for unemployment is
universal Homecroft Training in the public schools, the establishment of
all wageworkers in Suburban Homecrofts or Homecroft Villages, and that
every unemployed man or woman shall be set to work learning to be a
Homecrofter.
_Fifth:_ One million scientifically trained Homecrofters would be graduated
annually from the National Homecroft Reserve System,--ten million every ten
years,--with their families. These would scatter into every section of the
United States and would leaven a large loaf. They would be a tremendous
force to counteract the evil influences generated in the tenements. No
Homecrofter's family would ever be content to live in a flat or a tenement.
They would have learned the productive value of a Homecroft--a home with a
piece of ground that will produce food for the family.
_Sixth:_ The demonstration of the value of the Homecroft Life spread
throughout the United States by the millions of Homecroft Reserve graduates
would lead to a complete reconstruction of the Public School System of
every State. The year would be divided into two terms--one, a six months'
term from fall until spring, during which the courses of study now pursued
would be continued; the other, a six months' term from spring until fall,
covering the entire growing season, during which fruit-growing,
truck-gardening, berry-culture, poultry raising, home making, home-keeping,
and home-handicraft would be taught. In the cities these Summer Homecroft
Schools would be in the suburbs and would give every city child a chance to
spend its days in the sunshine and fresh air, among the trees, birds,
fields, and flowers, for six months of every year.
Every great institution must have a gradual growth. The Homecroft Reserve
System should be started on a comparatively small scale in places where the
immediate need of the practical benefits it will accomplish are most
manifest. Its enlargement will follow as a natural evolution. Once well
under way, it will grow by leaps and bounds, like the rural mail service or
the Agricultural Department of the national government.
When the electric light was first demonstrated to be a scientific success,
few realized in how short a time electricity would light the world. The
development of electric transportation and of the automobile are familiar
illustrations. Only a few years have elapsed since Kipling wrote "Across
the Atlantic with the Irish Mail." How many would then have believed
possible the work of the Aëroplane Service in the present war? And yet, all
that has so far been done is only a forecast of greater development in
aërial navigation in the near future. The original inventor of the
telephone has seen the evolution of its vast utilization and recently was
the first to talk over a wire across the continent.
No one would for a moment question that the national government could
establish an educational institution in which one thousand men with their
families could be located in a cottage on an acre of ground, and the men
trained in truck-gardening and poultry raising, and the women trained to
cook the products of the garden and poultry yard for the family table. That
is all there is to it; and to train a thousand men in that way is no more
difficult than to take a thousand raw recruits and transform them into a
regiment of trained soldiers. It is likewise beyond question that the same
man can be trained for both vocations, and every Homecroft Reservist would
be so trained. Gardeners make ideal soldiers. The Japanese proved that.
No one familiar with the multitude of cases where it has been done, would
have any doubt that a man and woman who know how to intensively cultivate
an acre can produce from it what that man and that woman need for their own
family to eat, and a surplus product worth from five hundred to a thousand
dollars a year or more. Neither would they doubt that a thousand could do
the same thing. Nor, again, would they doubt that one thousand men and
women of average intelligence and industry, who did not know how, could
learn the way to do it from competent instructors.
If that can be done with one thousand it can be done with ten thousand; and
if it can be done with ten thousand it can be done with one hundred
thousand, or one million, or five million. It would indeed be strange if
this nation could not train five million families so they would be
competent truck-gardeners, when that vocation has been mastered by thirty
million of Japan's rural population.
The militarists contend that the Standing Army should be increased to
200,000 men, an increase of 100,000, assuming that the present army were
enlisted up to its full authorized strength of 100,000. A Homecroft Reserve
of 100,000 men, properly established, organized, and trained, would be of
vastly more value to the country for national defense than an increase of
100,000 men in the Standing Army; but there should be no such limit on the
extension of the Homecroft Reserve. It should be steadily increased until
the full quota of 5,000,000 has been established. But in order to draw
comparisons between the respective advantages of the two systems, let it be
assumed that the establishment of a Homecroft Reserve were to be first
authorized by Congress for 100,000 men, the same number that it is
contended should be added to the regular Standing Army. In that event the
most immediate beneficial results would be secured by the establishment of
Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements of ten thousand acres each (from which
they should be developed to a strength of not less than one hundred
thousand each as rapidly as possible) in the following locations:
_In California_, ten thousand acres should be acquired by the national
government in the vicinity of Redding in the upper Sacramento Valley, and
settled with that number of Homecroft Reservists who would work on the Iron
Canyon Reservoir and the system of diversion canals therefrom.
Ten thousand acres should be acquired on the west side of the Sacramento
Valley, near Colusa, and 10,000 Homecroft Reservists located thereon, who
would work on a great system to control the flood waters of the Sacramento
River, and to save and utilize the silt for fertilization by building a
series of large settling basins.
Ten thousand acres should be acquired near Stockton where 10,000 Homecroft
Reservists would be located, who would work on the Calaveras Reservoir and
an irrigation system to utilize the stored water therefrom, and also carry
forward any further work necessary for the complete protection of Stockton
and the delta of the San Joaquin River from floods.
Ten thousand acres should be acquired near Fresno, where 10,000 Homecroft
Reservists would be located, who would work on a navigable channel to
Fresno and a drainage canal through the center of the San Joaquin Valley.
Ten thousand acres should be acquired near Bakersfield, where 10,000
Homecroft Reservists would be located, who would work on the irrigation
canals and systems necessary for the complete reclamation of the lands on
which they were settled, and of other lands acquired by the national
government in the San Joaquin Valley.
That would provide a force of 50,000 Homecroft Reservists in the one
particular portion of the United States where they are most likely to be
needed for actual military service.
_In Louisiana_, ten thousand acres should be acquired of the best garden
land in the Bayou Teche Country, on which 10,000 Homecroft Reservists would
be located, and set to work building the great Atchafalaya Controlled
Outlet, and the western dike to form the Auxiliary Flood Water Channel from
Old River to the Gulf of Mexico.
Ten thousand acres should be acquired in the vicinity of New Roads, where
10,000 Homecroft Reservists would be located, and set to work building the
north and south dike forming the eastern bank of the auxiliary flood water
channel from Old River to Morgan City and thence to the Gulf of Mexico, to
protect the whole territory between the Atchafalaya River and the
Mississippi River from overflow by backwater from the Atchafalaya.
That would establish 20,000 Homecroft Reservists at a point from which they
could be quickly transported to any point where troops might be needed for
the defense of the Gulf Coast or the Mexican Border.
_In West Virginia_, ten thousand acres should be acquired in the valley of
the Monongahela River and its tributaries in that State for 10,000
Homecroft Reservists who would do the work of building the necessary
reservoirs and works for the regulation of the flow of the Monongahela
River and the prevention of floods thereon.
Ten thousand acres should be acquired in the valley of the Little Kanawha
near Parkersburg, and between Parkersburg and Huntington, and 10,000
Homecrofters located thereon, who would labor on the works necessary for
the development of all the water power capable of development in West
Virginia and for the regulation of the flow of every river flowing out of
West Virginia into the Ohio so there would be no more floods from those
rivers.
This West Virginia Department of the Homecroft Reserve could be transported
to any point on the Atlantic Seacoast in a very brief time. In a day troops
for the defense of New York could be rushed from West Virginia to that city
over the Pennsylvania, Baltimore and Ohio and Chesapeake and Ohio
Railroads.
Ten thousand Homecrofters should be located in Northern Minnesota, in the
Lake Region, where the Mississippi River has its sources. They should be
set to work to enlarge the present National Reservoir System on the
headwaters of the Mississippi River until the entire flow of the
Mississippi River at Minneapolis and St. Paul had been completely equalized
throughout the year, for the development of power at those cities, and for
the improvement of navigation on the upper Mississippi.
The construction work indicated above, which should be done by the
Homecroft Reserve in the locations named, should be carried forward
simultaneously with the work of reclaiming or preparing for cultivation in
acre tracts and building the cottage homes on the lands set apart for the
establishment of the Homecroft Reserves thereon. A part of the men should
be engaged in this work while others were engaged on the projects above
specified for the construction of which their labor would be utilized.
The Reservists would be paid wages for all this work which would give them
a start and enable them to establish themselves on their Homecrofts as soon
as the houses were ready for occupancy. In many cases it would probably be
found that families of Homecrofters would prefer to live on their homecroft
while the work of completing its construction was being done, and would
provide tents or inexpensive houses for such temporary occupancy, at their
own expense.
_The immediate establishment of these initial units of the Homecroft
Reserve, aggregating only 100,000 men, would enlarge the military forces of
the United States to the extent that it is now vigorously contended the
standing army should be immediately enlarged._
Instead of being condemned to idleness in barracks, the soldiers comprising
the increased forces would be doing useful and productive labor and would
build enormously valuable internal improvements.
It would cost $100,000,000 a year to maintain, as a part of the present
military system of the United States, the proposed increase of 100,000 men,
which the Militarists contend should be added to the regular army for our
national defense.
That $100,000,000 a year, divided among the projects above named, would
provide the following amount for each project annually until completed:
Iron Canyon Reservoir $10,000,000
Sacramento Flood Control 10,000,000
Calaveras Reservoir 10,000,000
San Joaquin River 10,000,000
Drainage Canal to Bakersfield 10,000,000
Atchafalaya Controlled Outlet 10,000,000
Atchafalaya Protection Levees 10,000,000
Monongahela Reservoirs 10,000,000
Ohio River Reservoirs 10,000,000
Mississippi River Reservoirs 10,000,000
------------
Total $100,000,000
That amount of money for one year would complete most of the above
projects.
Another $100,000,000--the amount an additional 100,000 men added to the
regular army would cost for the second year--would provide $1000 for the
improvement of every acre of the total 100,000 acres purchased or set apart
by the government for subdivision into one acre Homecrofts for the
Homecroft Reserves in California, Minnesota, Louisiana, and West Virginia.
Of that $1000 an acre, $100 would more than cover its cost, $200 an acre
would cover the investment for reclamation and preparation for occupation,
and $500 an acre would cover the cost of the house and outbuildings,
leaving a surplus to the government of $200 an acre on each of the 100,000
Homecrofts.
Every Homecroft would thereafter return to the government from the rental
charge thereon, six per cent on a valuation of $1000 to cover interest and
sinking fund, and an additional six per cent for all other expenses of
instruction, operation, and maintenance. And perpetually thereafter, for
all time, those 100,000 Homecrofts would provide a permanent force of
100,000 Reservists for the national defense, without any cost to the
government for their maintenance.
The Homecroft Reserves should be established on the basis of an
organization of 1000--ten companies of 100 each--in one organized and
united community. These community organizations, which would each furnish a
regiment in the Reserve, would be organized primarily as Educational
Institutions, with Instructors to train the Homecrofters in every branch of
scientific truck-gardening, fruit-growing, berry-culture, poultry raising,
preparing products for market and for home consumption, coöperative
purchase of supplies and distribution of products, home-handicraft and
"_housekeeping by the year_." The officers of each company and of the
regiment would be resident Homecrofters like the rest. They would have
received their military training in military schools established and
maintained by the War Department for that purpose. No better use could be
made of the military posts now in existence and of their equipment and
buildings than to use them as military schools for training officers under
the exclusive control and management of the War Department. Every company
in the Homecroft Reserve should be thoroughly drilled at least once every
week for ten months of the year, leaving two months for a long march and an
annual encampment and field maneuvers.
The number of regiments in the Homecroft Reserve could be increased just
as fast as the necessary Educational and Military Instructors could be
developed for the establishment of new Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements.
That would be very rapidly, after the first few years. Once the details had
been worked out for one Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlement of 10,000 men,
the duplication of the plan would be routine work.
There would be no possibility of enlarging the system fast enough to keep
pace with the applications for enlistment. The benefits to the individual
who served a five years' enlistment in the Homecroft Reserve would be
obvious to the whole people. More than that, the opportunity to combine a
soldier's patriotic service to his country with home life and educational
instruction for the entire family would appeal to a multitude of
industrious families without capital. They would see the opportunity
through that channel to establish themselves in homes of their own on the
land. That is the ambition and hope of millions of our fast multiplying
population.
A charge of Ten Dollars a month as the rental value of each acre Homecroft
would be a very low amount to be paid for the use and occupation of the
Homecroft and the instruction and training going with it. That charge would
provide an annual rental to the government of $120 from each and every
Homecroft. That would cover, on a fixed valuation of $1000 on each
Homecroft, four per cent interest and two per cent for a sinking fund, and
would leave six per cent for cost of operation and maintenance, cost of
educational instruction and schools, cost of life insurance, and cost of
maintenance of military equipment and organization.
In return for this annual rental of $120, the Homecrofter would get a home
that would yield him a comfortable income, instruction in everything he
would need to know to produce the desired results from its intensive
cultivation, schooling for his children,--in fact every advantage that
comes within the compass of a wage earner's life,--and during the five year
period of enlistment he would learn what would be to him the most valuable
trade he could be taught--the trade of getting his own living by his own
labor and that of his family from an acre of ground.
He would be able--and every enlisted Homecrofter would be trained with that
end in view--to lay by enough from his sales of surplus products during the
five years of his service to buy a Homecroft of his own, at the expiration
of that term, in any part of the country where he desired to settle. He
should save at least $2000 during the five years.
A life and accident insurance system would be worked out in all its
details, and a sufficient part of the annual rental of $120 a year set
apart for that purpose to provide both accident and life insurance for
every Homecrofter during the five year period of service in the reserve. In
the event of the death or permanent disability of any Homecrofter, either
in time of peace or during actual warfare, the fee simple title to an acre
Homecroft in lieu of a pension should vest in his heirs or in the person
who would have been entitled to a pension if the general pension system had
been applicable to the case. In this way the burden on the people of an
enormous pension roll as the aftermath of a war would be obviated. The
value of the Homecroft secured in lieu of a pension would be much more than
$1000. It would not only furnish a permanent home for the survivors, but a
home that would yield them a living and $500 or $1000 a year and over as
the income from fruit, berries, vegetables, and poultry produced on the
Homecroft.
The advantages to the family of the Reservist of this plan over the
ordinary pension system is too manifest to need comment. Its advantage to
the people can be appreciated when we bear in mind that the amount already
paid out for pensions on account of the Civil War is $4,457,974,496.47 and
$46,092,740.84 more on account of the Spanish-American and Philippine Wars.
The Homecrofts that would go to the families of Reservists under this plan
would not be located in the same communities as those occupied by active
Reservists, but in Homecroft Rural Settlements created and organized for
the special purpose of Homecroft grants in lieu of pensions or life
insurance or accident insurance. The right to a Homecroft in lieu of a
pension should arise not only in case of death, but also in the event of
any serious permanent injury disabling the Reservist from active service or
from labor in ordinary commercial or industrial vocations.
_That is what the Homecroft Reserve System would offer to the individual
Homecrofter. Is there any doubt that it is a good proposition for him and
his family?_
The chief difficulty in bringing the public to a realization of the
advantages of the Homecroft Reserve System, particularly its financial
advantages, is to get away from the common idea that a thing can be done on
a small scale, but not on a large scale. Many things can be done on a large
scale better and more economically than on a small scale, _and this is one
of them_.
_The problem of providing adequately for the national defense of a country
as big as the United States is a large problem and must be solved in a
large way._
The total amount that it would be necessary for the United States to
invest, in order to permanently establish a Homecroft Reserve of 5,000,000
trained soldiers, would be less than it has already paid out for pensions;
and its whole investment in the Homecroft Reserve Establishment would be
returned to the government with interest. The amount the United States has
already paid for pensions amounts to $4,729,957,370.65. Within two years it
will have exceeded five billion dollars.
Most people lose sight of the magnitude of the present appropriations,
expenditures, and operations of the United States, as well as of their
wastefulness under the present military system. We are spending over
$100,000,000 a year on a standing army of less than 100,000 enlisted men.
That amounts to a billion dollars in ten years. It is five billion dollars
in fifty years. And we may be certain that five billion dollars will be
spent, and probably much more, in the next fifty years on a standing army.
When that has been spent it is absolutely gone, just as much as though it
had been invested in fire crackers and they had all been set off and there
was nothing left, not even noise.
It is not contended that this country should spend _less_ than $100,000,000
a year on its army, _but it is contended that it should not spend more_.
And for what it does spend it should get larger results. $100,000,000 a
year ought to be enough to maintain an army enlisted to the full strength
of 100,000 men to which the army is now limited by Act of Congress. In
addition it should support the necessary organization and training schools
to furnish all the officers required for the National Construction Reserve
and for the National Homecroft Reserve. The officers of the Homecroft
Reserve should be permanently located as residents of the community where
their regiment is established.
The officers for the National Construction Reserve should be attached to
the Regular Army except when detailed for the work of training those
reserves during the period set apart for that work each year. At least
one-half of the rank and file of a regular force of 100,000 men in the
Standing Army should be composed of men trained for service as officers in
the National Construction Reserve, and available for instant transformation
into such officers. The training of those officers should be one of the
most important functions of the Regular Army. The Army should forthwith
take up that work and cease any further connection with the civil work of
internal improvements.
_If the Standing Army of the United States were increased to an actually
enlisted strength of 200,000 men as is now being urged, it would mean the
addition of another $100,000,000 a year to the military burdens of the
people of the United States, and we would still be without any adequate
national defense in case of war with a first-class power._
Now compare the plan for a Homecroft Reserve and its results, from the
financial point of view, with this proposition to increase the Regular Army
to a total strength of 200,000 men.
The annual cost of an increase of 100,000 men in the Regular Army would be
$100,000,000 a year; or $5,000,000,000 in fifty years. Every dollar of that
huge sum would be drawn from the people by taxation. When spent it would be
gone, leaving nothing to show for its expenditure. The economic value of
the labor of 100,000 men would be wasted. That would be another
$5,000,000,000 in fifty years, estimating the potential labor value of each
man at $1000 a year. That makes the stupendous total economic loss and
waste of money and human labor of ten billion dollars in fifty years,--an
amount ten times as large as the whole national debt of the United
States,--an amount as large as the combined national debts of Great Britain
and France, which an eminent authority has said are so large that they
never can be paid.
_Measure up against that proposition the Homecroft Reserve plan and compare
results:_
Every $1000 of capital invested in the establishment of the Homecroft
Reserve will reclaim and fully equip an acre Homecroft with a Reservist and
his family on it. There is no reason why the capital necessary for that
should be provided from current revenues. In fact it should not be so
provided, because it would be invested in property to be perpetually owned
by the national government, from which future generations will derive an
enormous annual revenue.
A fixed average valuation of one thousand dollars for each Homecroft would
be more than enough to cover the cost of reclamation, preparation for
occupancy, building roads, houses, and outbuildings, water systems,
sanitation, institutes for instruction, schools, libraries,--in fact
everything needed to be done to make each Homecroft ready for occupancy as
a productive acre garden home, with a complete community organization. It
would also cover the cost of the original military equipment of the
Reservist who would occupy the Homecroft.
Each Reservist would pay for the use of the Homecroft and for educational
instruction for himself and family, a net annual rental of $120, being
twelve per cent on the fixed capitalized value of $1000 placed on each
Homecroft. Of that rental of twelve per cent, four per cent would be
apportioned to interest, and two per cent to create a sinking fund that
would cover the entire principal in fifty years. The remaining six per cent
would cover expenses of operation and maintenance, instruction, and all
other expenses connected with the Homecroft Reserve Establishment,
including military expenditures. The government would be under no expense
whatsoever for the maintenance of this Homecroft Reserve Establishment that
would have to be borne out of the general revenues, not even for field
maneuvers. There would be no expenses of railway transportation to those
maneuvers. Every regiment would march to and from its annual encampment.
One hundred and twenty dollars a year would be the revenue to the
government from one Homecroft. After that it becomes merely a question of
multiplying units. The revenue from 5,000,000 Homecrofts would be
$600,000,000 a year. As fast as the capital was needed for investment in
the creation and establishment of Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements, it
could be easily secured by the government. A plan that would insure this
would be the adoption of a financial system to cover this branch of the
operations of the Government which would be modeled after the French Rentes
System. Instead of Government Bonds, as they are now called, Government
Homecroft Certificates would be issued, bearing four per cent interest, in
denominations of twenty-five dollars. The interest on each certificate
would be one dollar a year. If such certificates were available, the purse
strings of the people would be opened to take them as readily as those of
the French people were opened to take the securities issued by the French
Government to pay the war debt of a billion dollars to Germany after the
Franco-Prussian War.
$500,000,000 a year of these certificates could be issued every year for
ten years. That would complete the work of creating the entire Homecroft
Reserve Establishment and provide the capital of $5,000,000,000 necessary
for investment therein.
Starting from that point, in fifty years thereafter the entire investment
of $5,000,000,000 would have been repaid with all current interest, and the
government would own the 5,000,000 Homecrofts free and clear of all
indebtedness or financial obligations relating thereto.
Now put the two propositions side by side and look at them.
An increase of 100,000 men in the Standing Army would mean in fifty years:
1. An expense of $5,000,000,000 for maintenance.
2. An economic waste of another $5,000,000,000, being the potential labor
value of the 100,000 men who would be withdrawn from industry.
The Homecroft Reserve Establishment would provide a military force of
5,000,000 men instead of 100,000.
It would provide for the maintenance of this immense force during the fifty
years without any ultimate cost to the government.
It would create and vest in the government in perpetual ownership property
consisting of 5,000,000 acre Homecrofts worth $1000 apiece,--a total
property value of $5,000,000,000 which would be acquired by the
Government, and fully paid for from the Rental Revenues from the property
during the fifty year period.
It would thereafter provide from those Rental Revenues an annual income to
the government of six per cent on $5,000,000,000 amounting to $300,000,000
a year.
The potential labor value of the 100,000 men in each Homecroft Reserve
Corps would be saved and transformed into an actual productive value of the
$1000 which each would annually produce from his Homecroft. The productive
labor value of each Corps of 100,000 Homecroft Reservists therefore would
amount to $5,000,000 in fifty years. That is the same amount that would
represent the economic waste during that same period, of the potential
labor value of the additional force of 100,000 men which it is now proposed
shall be added to the regular army.
The economic value of the productive labor of the entire Homecroft Reserve
of 5,000,000 men in the fifty years would be fifty times $5,000,000,000.
And in order to save the enormous expense and waste that would result from
increasing the standing army, and, in addition, to achieve the stupendous
benefits that would result from the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve,
it is only necessary that the same common sense business methods and
principles should be applied to the operations of the government that any
large corporation would adopt if it had the financial resources, of the
United States.
_Why should anyone be staggered at the proposition for the establishment of
the Homecroft Reserve, or balk at it because it is big?_
When the national government owns 29,600,000 acres of national forests in
the drainage basin of the Colorado River, is there any reason why it cannot
reclaim and settle in one-acre garden homes, the comparatively small area
of 1,000,000 acres which is only a part of what it owns in the main valley
of the Colorado River between Needles and Yuma?
If it can do that in the Colorado River Country is there any reason why it
should not take a million acres of land in northern Minnesota, which it
now owns, and reclaim it and settle it in one-acre garden homes? The
government now owns, in addition to that land, 987,000 acres of national
forest in Minnesota.
If the government can acquire by purchase, as is now being done, another
million acres of forest lands in the Appalachian Mountains under the
Appalachian National Forest Act, is there any reason why it should not
acquire a million acres of land in West Virginia and irrigate it and
subdivide it into one-acre garden homes, and put Homecrofters on it to
intensively cultivate the land?
If it can do that in West Virginia, is there any reason why it should not
be done in Louisiana or in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley in
California?
In the case of the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements
the government will see to it, itself, that its work does in fact result in
actual home making, whereas speculators get the ultimate benefit of much of
the other work that it does.
If the government can maintain a Department of Agriculture at an expense of
$20,000,000 in one year, for the instruction of farmers in _agriculture_,
who get the benefit of that service without paying for it, is there any
reason why it should not maintain educational institutions to train
Homecroft Reservists in _Acreculture_, if they pay for the cost of that
instruction and all the expenses of maintaining the necessary educational
institutions?
If the government can enlist men in the regular army for national defense
and put them in camps and barracks in time of peace to waste their time in
idleness, is there any reason why it should not enlist men in a Reserve and
put them in Homecrofts, where their labor will be utilized in production,
and the elevating influence of family and community life be substituted for
the demoralizing influences of the life of the camp or barracks?
There is no more reason why the government should not build and perpetually
own the Homecrofts used for this national purpose of education and defense
than there is that it should not own the Military Academy at West Point or
the Naval Academy at Annapolis, or any land used by the Agricultural
Department for any of its work, which is educational, or by the War
Department, which is for national defense. The Homecrofts used to train and
maintain in the service the Homecroft Reserves would be used for a
combination of both purposes, and their cost would be just as properly
classified as an expenditure for national defense as the cost of any
existing camp, barracks, or army post now owned by the government.
The burden of the Standing Army of less than 100,000 men now maintained by
the United States could be very considerably reduced by establishing as
large a portion of it as possible in the Homecroft System, were it not for
the false ideals as to human values that are apparently so deeply imbedded
in the minds of the military caste.
_The entire Homecroft Reserve System should be organized as a separate
department of the National government like the Forest Service or
Reclamation Service, and should be known as the Homecroft Service._
The Homecroft Reserve in Minnesota should be known as the Department of the
Reserves of the North; the Reserve in Louisiana as the Department of the
Reserves of the South; the Reserve in West Virginia as the Department of
the Reserves of the East; the Reserve in the Colorado Valley and Nevada as
the Department of the Reserves of the West; and the Reserve in the
Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys in California as the Department of the
Reserves of the Pacific.
The Louisiana Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and sailors; the
West Virginia and Minnesota Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and
Foresters; the Colorado River and California Reservists would be trained as
Homecrofters and Irrigators--Conquerors of the Desert; the Nevada
Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and Cavalrymen,--the Cossack
Cavalry of America,--and all would be good soldiers, as well as the very
highest type of good citizens.
[Illustration: Map showing Territorial Divisions and Locations of the
Departments of the National Homecroft Reserves. Also showing the Corrected
Mexican Boundary Line and Neutral Zone between the United States and
Mexico, and the New State of South California.]
During the entire two months devoted to the regular annual march,
encampment, and field maneuvers, the members of the Homecroft Reserve would
be under the military control and direction of the War Department, exactly
as they would be in times of actual warfare. During the remaining ten
months they would be under the civil jurisdiction of the Homecroft Service.
One of the insuperable obstacles in the way of efficient national defense
by State Militia is the impossibility of rapid mobilization, and the
practical certainty that in case of actual war none of the States on the
coast of the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico would permit their State
Militia to be diverted from the protection of their own State. This would
leave the great seaboard cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, or
cities located near the Atlantic Coast like Baltimore and Washington,
without an adequate force for their protection in case of war.
One of the chief reasons for concentrating a million of the Homecroft
Reserves in one State would be to facilitate the establishment of a perfect
military organization on a large scale as is required by modern warfare;
and to avoid delay in mobilization and expense for transportation to annual
encampments and field maneuvers. The Homecroft Reserve plan contemplates
that there shall be no expenditure for railroad transportation except in
the event of actual warfare. The Reserves in California and in the Colorado
River Valley would be marched with their full equipment to one great
concentration camp in Nevada for their annual encampment and for field
maneuvers. The whole military organization, officers, auxiliaries, and
military machinery, for an army of two million men would thus be given
actual training every year in the complicated work of handling a great army
in the field. That would not be possible if they were scattered over the
United States from Dan to Beersheba, in little bunches of a company here
and another there.
Annual encampments for field maneuvers for the other sections of the
reserve should be established at least 400 miles distant from their regular
permanent Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements.
The Roman soldiers were trained to march twenty miles in six hours and
carry their heavy equipment. The Emperor Septimius Severus marched at the
head of his army on foot and in complete armor for eight hundred miles from
the Danube to Rome in forty days--twenty miles a day. Such a march, once
every year, should be a part of the training of every soldier in the
Homecroft Reserve.
There would be no difficulty in finding places in Texas adapted for the
field maneuvers of the 1,000,000 men comprising the Homecroft Reserve in
Louisiana, and the annual encampment of those in Minnesota could be located
in Montana.
In West Virginia the country is mountainous and smaller units of
organization would be more easily adapted to that State, as in Switzerland.
In West Virginia the government would not acquire its entire million acres
in one body. It would be scattered into many different sections of the
State, in practically every valley, but more particularly in the rolling
country lying between the mountains and the Ohio River, which stretches
all the way from Wheeling to Huntington in West Virginia. If it were
desirable to concentrate the entire million men in one annual concentration
camp, the best location for it would be in the northern part of the
peninsula of Michigan.
There are many reasons why West Virginia should be chosen for the
establishment of the Homecroft Reserve for the eastern section of the
United States. Its chief advantage is its central location, almost
equi-distant between Maine and Florida and within marching distance from
any point on the Atlantic seaboard, the Mississippi River, or the Great
Lakes.
Switzerland could be reproduced in West Virginia, with the climatic and
physical conditions of the two countries so much alike. The Swiss Military
System could be applied to the entire State. With a million regularly
enlisted Homecroft Reservists at all times ready for service, there would
then be in addition a large unorganized reserve composed of graduates from
the Homecroft Reserves or who had received a military training in the
public schools. It would be entirely practicable to engraft the entire
Swiss system of universal military training in the public schools on the
school system of the State of West Virginia.
Switzerland has a total area of 15,975 square miles with a population of
3,741,971. West Virginia has an area of 24,170 square miles and a
population of 1,221,119. The addition of 1,000,000 Homecroft Reservists to
its population with their families, would bring the total population up to
nearly twice that of Switzerland. The marvelous adaptability of West
Virginia to the Homecroft idea and its possibilities as a fruit and
vegetable and poultry producing country were fully set forth in an article
in the "National Magazine" for December, 1913, which has been reprinted
under its title, "West Virginia, the Land Overlooked," in a pamphlet issued
by the Department of Agriculture of the State of West Virginia.
The following pertinent statements are made in that article: "Fifty years
of amazing progress in West Virginia gives a new significance to her
motto, 'Montani semper liberi,' meaning 'Mountaineers always freemen.'
There is something in the environment and in the rugged scenery of the
State that gives its people the freedom loving spirit of the Swiss." The
"strategic importance" of the State is shown in these words: "A circle with
a radius of two hundred and fifty miles makes West Virginia the center of
all the markets laved by the waters of the Atlantic and the great lakes on
the north. Within this circle is located the capital of the nation and
twelve of the world's greatest cities."
With these facts in mind, anyone who will look at a map of the eastern half
of the United States will agree that West Virginia is the right State in
which to rear and train and concentrate the Reserve Force required for the
defense of the east and the Atlantic seaboard.
The northern half of the State of Minnesota affords perhaps the most
perfect adaptability of any section of the United States to the plan for a
Homecroft Reserve of one million men to be located there. The national
government now owns more than a million acres of land that could be
reclaimed for this purpose. The national government also owns national
forests in the State of Minnesota aggregating close to a million acres. The
land needed for the 1,000,000 Homecrofts could be selected from land
already owned by the government, or other lands could be acquired. That
country is the original Homecroft section in the United States. The people
of Duluth have tried it out and found it good. Anyone who wants proof of
the possibilities of acre production needs only to go to Duluth and make
some investigations there. He will find unquestionable records of acreage
production of vegetables, running all the way from $1000 to $4000 an acre
in one year.
The population of the United States is out of balance--too many consumers
in cities--too few producers in the country--with a steadily increasing
food shortage and higher cost of living in consequence. The annual
production of food from the 5,000,000 acres owned by the national
government, and intensively cultivated by the Homecroft Reserve, would
tend largely to reduce the cost of living. It would aggregate more than
half the value of the entire annual production from all the farms of the
United States to-day.
That would, however, be but a small part of the stupendous enlargement of
the economic power of the United States that would result from the work
that would be done by the National Construction Corps to increase the area
available for food production, and enlarge the productiveness of lands
already under cultivation. The great works that would be built by the
Construction Corps of the Reclamation Service would accomplish:
(_a_) The utilization of the waters of eastern streams for increasing the
annual production of between 150 and 200 million acres by supplemental
irrigation in the humid and sub-humid sections of the country;
(_b_) The reclamation by irrigation of at least 75 million acres of land
now desert in the western part of the United States;
(_c_) The reclamation by drainage or protection from overflow of 75
million acres of swamp and overflow lands situated largely in the eastern
and southern states.
A total of 150 million acres of worthless deserts and swamps would be
reclaimed and devoted to food production. That would be equivalent to the
actual _creation_ of an area of that enormous extent of new lands where
none had been before, and these new lands would be the most fertile and
highly productive of any lands in the United States. If the annual gross
production of the 150 million acres of reclaimed deserts and swamps were
put at only $60 an acre, which is a low estimate, it would amount to
$9,000,000,000 a year, and _the world needs the food_. The value of all the
wealth produced on farms in the United States in 1910 was estimated by the
Secretary of Agriculture to have been $8,926,000,000.
The application of supplemental irrigation to lands in the United States
already under cultivation by rainfall, as is done upon large areas in
France, Spain and Italy, would double or treble the production of farm
crops on such lands. And if 100,000,000 acres of those lands were
intensively cultivated and fertilized, as is now done on much of the land
devoted to truck-gardening on the Atlantic coast, the gross food production
from every acre intensively tilled in that way can be increased more than
$1,000 a year. That would mean an increase in the food supplies of the
United States aggregating an annual total of _one hundred billion dollars a
year_.
These figures look so large as to seem visionary to those who are
uninformed as to the facts, but it is only a question of multiplying units
of from one to five acres into which the land would be subdivided for
tillage by Homecrofters. With a population of 100,000,000 to feed now, and
the practical certainty that it will be 200,000,000 in another fifty years,
and 400,000,000 within a century, shall we hesitate to train the
Homecrofters who would each produce a gross yield of more than $1,000 from
every acre to feed our multiplying millions?
_If we do not train millions of our people to be Homecrofters and intensive
soil-cultivators, how are we going to feed our population when it reaches
200,000,000 or 400,000,000?_
All we need to do, to be sure of having at least 100,000,000 Homecrofters,
each producing $1,000 worth of food from a one-acre-garden home or
Homecroft, when our population has grown to 400,000,000 within a century,
is to graduate 1,000,000 Homecrofters every year from the Homecroft Reserve
Educational System as is in this book advocated and shown to be entirely
practicable.
Forestry also should be borne in mind in measuring the enlargement of the
nation's economic power through the work of the National Construction
Reserve, not only the perpetuation of present forests, but the
establishment of new forest plantations by planting trees. The forestry
resources of the nation should be administered and developed on a business
basis. Forests should be planted on every acre of land better adapted to
forestry than to agriculture. Forest plantations should be established and
maintained near every city or town that would coöperate by maintaining a
Forestry and Homecroft School as an adjunct to the forest plantation
established by the national government.
The value of matured forests should be carefully estimated, and the length
of time required to bring them to maturity. Forestry Construction Bonds
should be issued to cover the cost of the work of the Construction Corps of
the Forest Service. They should be 100 year bonds, issued under a plan that
would carefully estimate the income that would be derived from the forests
after they had attained to maturity. The first fifty years should be
allowed for the period of growth, during which only the interest on the
bonds should be payable. The second fifty year period should be the period
of liquidation, during which a sinking fund would be accumulated from sales
of wood and timber sufficient to cover the entire principal of the bonds,
in addition to the amount paid for interest thereon during the full term of
one hundred years through which the bond would run. The generations of the
future, who would derive the benefit from the work of this generation,
would provide for the payment of the debt from the income from the forest
resources which had been created for their benefit and bequeathed to them
by this generation. A hundred years is none too far ahead to plan in
formulating a great national forestry policy for such a nation as the
United States. The adoption of the policy of developing this branch of the
country's resources and economic power by a Forestry Bond Issue relieves
the plan of any difficulty that might otherwise arise if the expenditures
had to be met from current revenues. There is no right reason why this
generation should bear the entire burden of planting what future
generations will harvest. This generation would get a large benefit, but
the benefits to future generations would be far greater. They would inherit
the vast resources of wood and timber which would be created by the wise
forethought of the present generation.
Whenever this country has put itself on the economic basis that will be
established by the adoption of the National Construction Reserve and
Homecroft Reserve System, and maintains without ultimate cost to the
government a system that insures to the United States greater military
strength than that of any other nation, the economic currents and manifest
benefits to the people created by that condition will force all other
nations to abandon their systems of enormously expensive standing armies
and armaments.
The final power that must be relied on to ultimately make an end of war is
the drift of economic forces--a power as irresistible as the onward flow of
the Gulf Stream or the Japan Current. The universal adoption of the
Homecroft System of Education and Life that would eventually be brought
about by the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve would vest in the
United States an economic power that no other nation could stand against,
unless it adopted a similar system. We would have the economic strength
that China has to-day, supplemented by all the advantages of national
organization and modern science and machinery. After generations of
following after false gods, we would have abandoned the fallacious
teachings of Adam Smith and returned to the sound principles of national
and human life laid down in "Fields, Factories and Workshops," by Prince
Kropotkin.
Kropotkin calls attention to the fact that in Great Britain alone the area
under cultivation was decreased in the last fifty years more than five
million acres. That land was once cultivated by human labor. The hardy
yeomanry who tilled it have been forced into the congested cities or have
emigrated to other lands, and the five million citizen soldiers that
England might have had on those five million acres were not there when the
day of her great need came.
England is now paying the penalty of her adherence to the political economy
of Adam Smith instead of to that of Kropotkin. She has pursued a national
policy that counts national wealth in dollars instead of in men.
Let us learn a lesson from England's mistakes, the mistakes which have
brought upon her such an appalling calamity.
If the 5,000,000 acres that have been thrown out of cultivation in England
in the last fifty years were now settled with 5,000,000 Homecroft
Reservists, under the plan proposed for adoption in the United States,
those Homecrofters could pay off the national debt of Great Britain in just
two years and live comfortably the meanwhile. A total net annual production
of only $500 an acre, multiplied by the labor of 5,000,000 men for one
year, would amount to $2,500,000,000. That would be enough to pay off the
national debt of France in less than three years, and of Russia in less
than two years. It would pay off the entire war debt of the world in twenty
years. That gives some idea of the economic strength of a Homecroft nation,
such as we must create in the United States of America. The possibilities
of acreage production are steadily increasing as our scientific knowledge
of the mysteries of plant growth and methods of fertilization advances.
The United States is now at the forks of the road. Certain destruction is
our fate if we continue the drift away from the land into the congested
cities. If, instead of that, we become a nation of Homecrofters, no dream
can picture the future strength of this country or the human advancement
that its people will accomplish, to say nothing of the production of
national wealth so great as to be practically inconceivable.
In the future the power of the nations of the world will be in proportion
to the wise use they make of their productive resources, and the extent to
which they provide opportunities for _acreculture_ and create Homecroft
Rural Settlements instead of crowding humanity into congested cities where
they become consumers and cease to be producers of food.
If the present war has proved anything it has proved that the one thing
above all others which insures the national defense is trained and seasoned
men,--and enough of them to overwhelm any invading enemy by the sheer force
and weight of innumerable battalions. In all the future years the
fundamental military strength of every nation is going to be measured by
the number of such men that she has immediately available for instant
service, with adequate arms and equipment.
The establishment of a Homecroft Reserve by the United States of America
will make of this nation a living demonstration of the truth of those
immortal words of Henry W. Grady:
"_The citizen standing in the doorway of his home--contented on his
threshold--his family gathered about his hearthstone--while the evening of
a well spent day closes in scenes and sounds that are dearest--he shall
save the republic when the drum tap is futile and the barracks are
exhausted._"
THE SECRET OF NIPPON'S POWER
THE FIRST BOOK OF THE HOMECROFTERS CONTAINS
WE DARE NOT FAIL
THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN--Poem
CHARITY--Poem
CHARITY THAT IS EVERLASTING
THE SECRET OF NIPPON'S POWER
COMMERCIAL COMPETITION OF JAPAN
A WARNING FROM ENGLAND
THE GARDEN SCHOOL IS THE OPEN SESAME
THE LESSON OF A GREAT CALAMITY
OUR MOTTO--"DROIT AU TRAVAIL"
THE SIGN OF A THOUGHT--THE SWASTIKA
THE CREED AND PLATFORM OF THE HOMECROFTERS
"HOMECROFT"--THE MAKING OF A WORD
Price $1.00
Including Postage
May be ordered by mail from
RURAL SETTLEMENTS ASSOCIATION
COTTON EXCHANGE BUILDING, NEW ORLEANS, LA.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace" ***
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