Part 18 (1/2)
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 j.a.panese batteries defending every pa.s.s. It would be a task greater than the capture of Port Arthur to capture one pa.s.s and get it away from the j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 pa.s.ses--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 pa.s.ses that determines j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese.
”Los Angeles forms the main centre of these three pa.s.ses, 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 pa.s.ses, is within one hour by rail of both pa.s.ses.
”The mountain-chains encompa.s.sing 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 j.a.panese forces defending these pa.s.ses. 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 a.r.s.enic, 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 canons 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 Canons, 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan._
Already we have shown how they could duplicate the 12,500,000 acres of irrigated and cultivated land in j.a.pan 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 j.a.panese reclaiming and cultivating it.
They would bring their people over as fast as all the steamers of j.a.pan 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan, 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 ca.n.a.l that would also be a navigable ca.n.a.l, 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l from the river to the straits of Carquinez. Those straits should be crossed on a viaduct and the ca.n.a.l 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 furnis.h.i.+ng of water to other lands under the ca.n.a.l in the Sacramento and also in the San Joaquin Valley.
The cooperation 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 ca.n.a.l 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 j.a.panese. And with 1,000,000 Homecroft Reservists ready at any time to meet and repel an invasion, our occupancy of the country would be a.s.sured forever.
There would not be room left for many j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton would depend largely on the att.i.tude 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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, Was.h.i.+ngton, or Oregon, as well as their