_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 coordinated and brought together in a Board of River
Regulation. The coordination 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 coordinating 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 cooperation 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 debris. 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 cooperation 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. Cooperation 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.