Part 18 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.s.sumption 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 const.i.tuents 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 const.i.tuents. 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 cla.s.s of legislation in Congress.
Their att.i.tude in this whole field of public development is in humiliating contrast with that of the Samurai of j.a.pan 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 cla.s.s, and accepted a system which took from them all power and submerged them in the ma.s.s 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 coordination 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 a.s.signment 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 a.s.sociates 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 n.o.body 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 ca.n.a.l in California.
This ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l and it is now useless. It would be clearly unavailing to reexcavate it, because it would fill up again with the next big flood. The sediment which filled the ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l.
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 ill.u.s.trate 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 coordinate 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 coordinated 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.
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