Part 8 (1/2)

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 j.a.pan, 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 ant.i.thetic than are the ethical and civic ideals of j.a.pan 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 ma.s.s 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 subst.i.tute 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 a.r.s.enals 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 hards.h.i.+ps which are to the ordinary man impossible and inconceivable of being borne?

This necessity for men, _trained and hardened men_, men inured to the hards.h.i.+ps 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 hards.h.i.+p 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 ca.n.a.ls, and doing all the hard physical work that must be done by the men who have built the great reservoirs and ca.n.a.ls 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 const.i.tute 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 hards.h.i.+ps 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.