Part 16 (2/2)
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 owners.h.i.+p 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 owners.h.i.+p.
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 r.e.t.a.r.ding or destroying rail communication. The a.s.sured 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 a.s.surance of Peace. Neither j.a.pan nor any other nation would ever seriously consider undertaking to land an army anywhere on the sh.o.r.es 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 Inst.i.tutions for Instruction--Homecroft Inst.i.tutes--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. Cooperative 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 cooperate 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 cooperative grazing a.s.sociation, such as have been so successfully conducted in some of the other grazing States.
In this connection, it may be interesting in pa.s.sing 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 cla.s.s 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 sh.o.r.es 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 a.s.surance 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.
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