"Who's for the Gathering, who's for the Fair?(Gay goes the Gordon to a fight.)The bravest of the brave are at deadlock there.(Highlanders! March! By the right!)There are bullets by the hundred buzzing in the air:There are bonny lads lying on the hillsides bare;But the Gordons know what the Gordons dareWhen they hear their pipes playing.—'The Gay Gordons,' by Henry Newbolt.
"Who's for the Gathering, who's for the Fair?(Gay goes the Gordon to a fight.)The bravest of the brave are at deadlock there.(Highlanders! March! By the right!)There are bullets by the hundred buzzing in the air:There are bonny lads lying on the hillsides bare;But the Gordons know what the Gordons dareWhen they hear their pipes playing.
—'The Gay Gordons,' by Henry Newbolt.
"One hundred and thirty years ago the bagpipes of the 'Gay Gordons' first swirled the pibroch. Since then they have played it in every clime and nearly every land where British troops have fought."The Duke of Gordon was granted a 'Letter of Service' in 1794 to organize a Highland infantry regiment among his clansmen. Lady Gordon, 'The Darling Duchess,' took charge of the enlisting. Their son, the Marquis of Huntley, was the first colonel."The Gordons first saw service against the French in Holland in 1799. Outnumbered six to one, they received their baptism of fire in a wild charge at Egmont-op-Zee that madeall Great Britain ring with their praises. Their first laurels, won at a bloody cost, have never been dimmed."From Holland they went to Egypt, and with the Black Watch, the Cameronians and the Perthshire Greybreeks stormed up the shore of Aboukir Bay and later the height of Mandora. The name of every battle of Napoleon's futile attempt to master Egypt appears on their battle flags."They came home from there to line the streets of London at Nelson's funeral, a post of honor coveted by every British regiment. Next they appeared in Denmark and were at the fall of Copenhagen. Without a visit to Scotland the Gordons went to Spain and went through the glorious campaign of Sir John Moore. The French long remembered them for their fight at Corunna."When the British were retreating, the Gordons were the rear guard. At Elvania Sir John galloped along their line. Ammunition was low and no supplies available."'My brave Highlanders! You still have your bayonets! Remember Egypt!' the commander shouted."The pipers took up 'The Cock o' the North,' the sobriquet of the Duke of Gordon, and routed the pursuing French. The Gordons went to Portugal. Almarez is on their flags. They followed the Duke of Wellington backinto Spain and were in the fights that sent Joseph Bonaparte's army reeling home."The Gordons stood with the Black Watch at Quatre Bras, and two days later were at Waterloo. It was the Duchess of Richmond, a daughter of the Duchess of Gordon who recruited the Gordons, who gave the famous ball in Brussels the night before Waterloo. The officers of the Gay Gordons hurried from that levee, which Lord Byron, another Gordon, has commemorated in a poem, to the field of battle."The feat of the Gordons that day, in grabbing the stirrups of the charging Scots Greys, is one of history's most stirring pages. It is a striking coincidence that in the present war, just ninety-nine years later, the Gordons swung to the Greys' stirrups in another wild charge, this time against the Germans."The Gordons went to the Afghan War in 1878. In 1881 they campaigned across the veldts against the Boers. The next year they stood at El-Teb and Tel-el-Kebir with their old friends the Black Watch. They marched to Khartum when their namesake, Gordon, was trapped. That over, they went back to India for another Afghan war. They marched by the scenes of their bloody fights when going to the relief of Lucknow."In 1897 the Gordons were the heroes of all Britain. They, and a regiment of Gurkhas,charged a hill at Dargai in the face of almost superhuman difficulties. Two years later the regiment went to South Africa and fought valiantly through that war. At Eldanslaagte they were part of the column of General French, their present commander."The red uniform coat of the Gordons is lavishly trimmed in yellow, which brought them the sobriquet of 'Gay Gordons.' Of all the Scotch regiments it has tried the hardest to keep its ranks filled with Scotsmen, 'limbs bred in the purple heather.'"Officially the Gordons are the Ninety-second Highland Infantry."
"One hundred and thirty years ago the bagpipes of the 'Gay Gordons' first swirled the pibroch. Since then they have played it in every clime and nearly every land where British troops have fought.
"The Duke of Gordon was granted a 'Letter of Service' in 1794 to organize a Highland infantry regiment among his clansmen. Lady Gordon, 'The Darling Duchess,' took charge of the enlisting. Their son, the Marquis of Huntley, was the first colonel.
"The Gordons first saw service against the French in Holland in 1799. Outnumbered six to one, they received their baptism of fire in a wild charge at Egmont-op-Zee that madeall Great Britain ring with their praises. Their first laurels, won at a bloody cost, have never been dimmed.
"From Holland they went to Egypt, and with the Black Watch, the Cameronians and the Perthshire Greybreeks stormed up the shore of Aboukir Bay and later the height of Mandora. The name of every battle of Napoleon's futile attempt to master Egypt appears on their battle flags.
"They came home from there to line the streets of London at Nelson's funeral, a post of honor coveted by every British regiment. Next they appeared in Denmark and were at the fall of Copenhagen. Without a visit to Scotland the Gordons went to Spain and went through the glorious campaign of Sir John Moore. The French long remembered them for their fight at Corunna.
"When the British were retreating, the Gordons were the rear guard. At Elvania Sir John galloped along their line. Ammunition was low and no supplies available.
"'My brave Highlanders! You still have your bayonets! Remember Egypt!' the commander shouted.
"The pipers took up 'The Cock o' the North,' the sobriquet of the Duke of Gordon, and routed the pursuing French. The Gordons went to Portugal. Almarez is on their flags. They followed the Duke of Wellington backinto Spain and were in the fights that sent Joseph Bonaparte's army reeling home.
"The Gordons stood with the Black Watch at Quatre Bras, and two days later were at Waterloo. It was the Duchess of Richmond, a daughter of the Duchess of Gordon who recruited the Gordons, who gave the famous ball in Brussels the night before Waterloo. The officers of the Gay Gordons hurried from that levee, which Lord Byron, another Gordon, has commemorated in a poem, to the field of battle.
"The feat of the Gordons that day, in grabbing the stirrups of the charging Scots Greys, is one of history's most stirring pages. It is a striking coincidence that in the present war, just ninety-nine years later, the Gordons swung to the Greys' stirrups in another wild charge, this time against the Germans.
"The Gordons went to the Afghan War in 1878. In 1881 they campaigned across the veldts against the Boers. The next year they stood at El-Teb and Tel-el-Kebir with their old friends the Black Watch. They marched to Khartum when their namesake, Gordon, was trapped. That over, they went back to India for another Afghan war. They marched by the scenes of their bloody fights when going to the relief of Lucknow.
"In 1897 the Gordons were the heroes of all Britain. They, and a regiment of Gurkhas,charged a hill at Dargai in the face of almost superhuman difficulties. Two years later the regiment went to South Africa and fought valiantly through that war. At Eldanslaagte they were part of the column of General French, their present commander.
"The red uniform coat of the Gordons is lavishly trimmed in yellow, which brought them the sobriquet of 'Gay Gordons.' Of all the Scotch regiments it has tried the hardest to keep its ranks filled with Scotsmen, 'limbs bred in the purple heather.'
"Officially the Gordons are the Ninety-second Highland Infantry."
England's original expeditionary force to the continent in 1914 was less than 200,000 men. Suppose it had been 1,200,000. It might just as well have been 1,200,000, if a Scotch Homecroft Reserve had been long ago established, as should have been done, and gradually increased until a million men were enlisted in it. Would any one question the fact, if there had been another million men in England's expeditionary army when it was first sent to the continent, that it would have completely changed the whole current of events in this war? It would have checkedthe German advance into France and Belgium. Not a foot of Belgium's territory would have been wrested from her. Neither Brussels nor Antwerp would have been surrendered.
That conclusion is so self-evident and conservative, and the opportunity that England had to have such a force in reserve is so plain that it seems hard to believe that the United States will ignore its lesson and fail to establish a Homecroft Reserve in this country.
England had the original stock from which to breed such a brave and hardy race of soldiers, andthey were the original Homecrofters. There were not a million of them, but there were many thousands of them two centuries ago. There were so many that to-day there might easily have been a million such Homecrofters in England's army in Europe if the Homecroft Reserve System had been established when the trouble first began between the Homecrofters and the Great Landlords who finally succeeded in riveting the curse of land monopoly around Scotland's neck.
It may be argued that this suggestionis an afterthought, and that, as the Arab saying puts it, "The ditches are full of bright afterthoughts." That may be true as to England. But it is not true as to the United States. If we knew that it would be two hundred years before the great final struggle would be fought to determine whether the Pacific Coast of the United States should be dominated by the Asiatic or Caucasian race, right now is the time when we should begin to breed and train our millions of men who will have to fight that battle for us whenever the time does come that it has to be fought. It is as inevitable as fate that the conflict will come unless we safeguard against it by peopling America with a race as hardy and virile as the races on the Pacific shores of Asia are to-day.
The rugged physical manhood, rough daring and bravery, hardihood and endurance, self-reliance and resourcefulness, readiness for any emergency on land or sea, that characterized the type of men from whom the Homecroft Reserves would have been bred, and the rough rural environment in which they would havebeen reared, is strikingly described by S. R. Crockett in his novel "The Raiders."
And in "The Dark o' the Moon," the sequel to "The Raiders," he tells of the first of the struggles that were begun two centuries ago by the Homecrofters of Scotland to preserve their immemorial privileges of elbow-room and pasturage, as against the selfishness of the Landlord System that finally prevailed. That system decimated Scotland of her bravest men and left in their places hunting grounds and great estates to be sold or rented to American Snobocrats, who are not fighting any of England's battles in this war.
The early conflicts between the Landlords and the Homecrofters are referred to, and the scene of one of these conflicts is so interestingly told by the same author in his Book called "Raiderland," that the following quotation is made from it:
"The water-meadows, rich with long deep grass that one could hide in standing erect, bog-myrtle bushes, hazelnuts, and brambles big as prize gooseberries and black as—well, as our mouths when we had done eating them. Woods of tall Scotch firs stood upon one hand, oak and ash on the other. Out in the wimpling fairway of the Black Lane, the Hollan Isle lay anchored. Such a place for nuts! You could get back-loads and back-loads of them to break your teeth upon in the winter forenights. You could ferry across a raft laden with them. Also, and most likely, you could fall off the raft yourself and be well-nigh drowned. You might play hide-and-seek about the Camp, which (though marked 'probably Roman' in the Survey Map) is not a Roman Camp at all, instead only the last fortification of the Levellers in Galloway—those brave but benighted cottiers and crofters who rose in belated rebellion because the lairds shut them out from their poor moorland pasturages and peat-mosses."Their story is told in that more recent supplement to 'The Raiders' entitled 'The Dark o' the Moon.' There the record of their deliberations and exploits is in the main truthfully enough given, and the fact is undoubted that they finished their course within their entrenched camp upon the Duchrae bank, defying the king's troops with their home-made pikes and rusty old Covenanting swords."There is a ford (says this chronicle) over the Lane of Grennoch, near where the clear brown stream detaches itself from the narrows of the loch, and a full mile before itunites its slow-moving lily-fringed stream with the Black Water o' Dee rushing down from its granite moorlands."The Lane of Grennoch seemed to that comfortable English drover, Mr. Job Brown, like a bit of Warwickshire let into the moory boggish desolations of Galloway. But even as he lifted his eyes from the lily-pools where the broad leaves were already browning and turning up at the edges, lo! there, above him, peeping through the russet heather of a Scottish October, was a boulder of the native rock of the province, lichened and water-worn, of which the poet sings:"'See yonder on the hillside scaur,Up among the heather near and far,Wha but Granny Granite, auld Granny Granite,Girnin' wi' her grey teeth.'"If the traveller will be at the pains to cross the Lane of Grennoch, or, as it is now more commonly called, the Duchrae Lane, a couple of hundred yards north of the bridge, he will find a way past an old cottage, the embowered pleasure-house of many a boyish dream, out upon the craggy face of the Crae Hill. Then over the trees and hazel bushes of the Hollan Isle, he will have (like Captain Austin Tredennis) a view of the entire defences of the Levellers and of the way by which most of them escaped across the fords of the DeeWater, before the final assault by the king's forces."The situation was naturally a strong one—that is, if, as was at the time most likely, it had to be attacked solely by cavalry, or by an irregular force acting without artillery."In front the Grennoch Lane, still and deep with a bottom of treacherous mud swamps, encircled it to the north, while behind was a good mile of broken ground, with frequent marshes and moss-hags. Save where the top of the camp mound was cleared to admit of the scant brushwood tents of the Levellers, the whole position was further covered and defended by a perfect jungle of bramble, whin, thorn, sloe, and hazel, through which paths had been opened in all directions to the best positions of defence.""Such about the year 1723 was the place where the poor, brave, ignorant cottiers of Galloway made their last stand against the edict which (doubtless in the interests of social progress and the new order of things) drove them from their hillside holdings, their trim patches of cleared land, their scanty rigs of corn high in lirks of the mountain, or in blind 'hopes' still more sheltered from the blast."Opposite Glenhead, at the uppermost end of the Trod valley, you can see when the sun is setting over western Loch Moar and hisrays run level as an ocean floor, the trace of walled enclosures, the outer rings of farm-steadings, the dyke-ridges that enclosed theHomecrofts, small as pocket-handkerchiefs; and higher still, ascending the mountainside, regular as the stripes on corduroy, you can trace the ancient rigs where the corn once bloomed bonny even in these wildest and most remote recesses of the hills. All is now passed away and matter for romance—but it is truth all the same, and one may tell it without fear and without favour."From the Crae Hill, especially if one continues a little to the south till you reach the summit cairn above the farmhouse of Nether Crae you can see many things. For one thing you are in the heart of the Covenant Country."He pointed north to where on Auchencloy Moor the slender shaft of the Martyrs' Monument gleamed white among the darker heather—south to where on Kirkconnel hillside Grier of Lag found six living men and left six corpses—west towards Wigton Bay, where the tide drowned two of the bravest of womankind, tied like dogs to a stake—east to the kirkyards of Balmaghie and Cross-michael, where under the trees the martyrs of Scotland lie thick as gowans on the lea.""Save by general direction you cannot take in all these by the seeing of the eye fromthe Crae Hill. But you are in the midst of them, and the hollows of the hills where the men died for their 'thocht,' and the quiet God's Acres where they lie buried, are as much of the essence of Scotland as the red flushing of the heather in autumn and the hill tarns and 'Dhu Lochs' scattered like dark liquid eyes over the face of the wilds."
"The water-meadows, rich with long deep grass that one could hide in standing erect, bog-myrtle bushes, hazelnuts, and brambles big as prize gooseberries and black as—well, as our mouths when we had done eating them. Woods of tall Scotch firs stood upon one hand, oak and ash on the other. Out in the wimpling fairway of the Black Lane, the Hollan Isle lay anchored. Such a place for nuts! You could get back-loads and back-loads of them to break your teeth upon in the winter forenights. You could ferry across a raft laden with them. Also, and most likely, you could fall off the raft yourself and be well-nigh drowned. You might play hide-and-seek about the Camp, which (though marked 'probably Roman' in the Survey Map) is not a Roman Camp at all, instead only the last fortification of the Levellers in Galloway—those brave but benighted cottiers and crofters who rose in belated rebellion because the lairds shut them out from their poor moorland pasturages and peat-mosses.
"Their story is told in that more recent supplement to 'The Raiders' entitled 'The Dark o' the Moon.' There the record of their deliberations and exploits is in the main truthfully enough given, and the fact is undoubted that they finished their course within their entrenched camp upon the Duchrae bank, defying the king's troops with their home-made pikes and rusty old Covenanting swords.
"There is a ford (says this chronicle) over the Lane of Grennoch, near where the clear brown stream detaches itself from the narrows of the loch, and a full mile before itunites its slow-moving lily-fringed stream with the Black Water o' Dee rushing down from its granite moorlands.
"The Lane of Grennoch seemed to that comfortable English drover, Mr. Job Brown, like a bit of Warwickshire let into the moory boggish desolations of Galloway. But even as he lifted his eyes from the lily-pools where the broad leaves were already browning and turning up at the edges, lo! there, above him, peeping through the russet heather of a Scottish October, was a boulder of the native rock of the province, lichened and water-worn, of which the poet sings:
"'See yonder on the hillside scaur,Up among the heather near and far,Wha but Granny Granite, auld Granny Granite,Girnin' wi' her grey teeth.'
"'See yonder on the hillside scaur,Up among the heather near and far,Wha but Granny Granite, auld Granny Granite,Girnin' wi' her grey teeth.'
"If the traveller will be at the pains to cross the Lane of Grennoch, or, as it is now more commonly called, the Duchrae Lane, a couple of hundred yards north of the bridge, he will find a way past an old cottage, the embowered pleasure-house of many a boyish dream, out upon the craggy face of the Crae Hill. Then over the trees and hazel bushes of the Hollan Isle, he will have (like Captain Austin Tredennis) a view of the entire defences of the Levellers and of the way by which most of them escaped across the fords of the DeeWater, before the final assault by the king's forces.
"The situation was naturally a strong one—that is, if, as was at the time most likely, it had to be attacked solely by cavalry, or by an irregular force acting without artillery.
"In front the Grennoch Lane, still and deep with a bottom of treacherous mud swamps, encircled it to the north, while behind was a good mile of broken ground, with frequent marshes and moss-hags. Save where the top of the camp mound was cleared to admit of the scant brushwood tents of the Levellers, the whole position was further covered and defended by a perfect jungle of bramble, whin, thorn, sloe, and hazel, through which paths had been opened in all directions to the best positions of defence."
"Such about the year 1723 was the place where the poor, brave, ignorant cottiers of Galloway made their last stand against the edict which (doubtless in the interests of social progress and the new order of things) drove them from their hillside holdings, their trim patches of cleared land, their scanty rigs of corn high in lirks of the mountain, or in blind 'hopes' still more sheltered from the blast.
"Opposite Glenhead, at the uppermost end of the Trod valley, you can see when the sun is setting over western Loch Moar and hisrays run level as an ocean floor, the trace of walled enclosures, the outer rings of farm-steadings, the dyke-ridges that enclosed theHomecrofts, small as pocket-handkerchiefs; and higher still, ascending the mountainside, regular as the stripes on corduroy, you can trace the ancient rigs where the corn once bloomed bonny even in these wildest and most remote recesses of the hills. All is now passed away and matter for romance—but it is truth all the same, and one may tell it without fear and without favour.
"From the Crae Hill, especially if one continues a little to the south till you reach the summit cairn above the farmhouse of Nether Crae you can see many things. For one thing you are in the heart of the Covenant Country.
"He pointed north to where on Auchencloy Moor the slender shaft of the Martyrs' Monument gleamed white among the darker heather—south to where on Kirkconnel hillside Grier of Lag found six living men and left six corpses—west towards Wigton Bay, where the tide drowned two of the bravest of womankind, tied like dogs to a stake—east to the kirkyards of Balmaghie and Cross-michael, where under the trees the martyrs of Scotland lie thick as gowans on the lea."
"Save by general direction you cannot take in all these by the seeing of the eye fromthe Crae Hill. But you are in the midst of them, and the hollows of the hills where the men died for their 'thocht,' and the quiet God's Acres where they lie buried, are as much of the essence of Scotland as the red flushing of the heather in autumn and the hill tarns and 'Dhu Lochs' scattered like dark liquid eyes over the face of the wilds."
Well may England, as she looked over the battlefields of Belgium, and mourned the thousands and tens of thousands of her brave men whose lives have paid the forfeit for her heedlessness, and listened to the bombardment of her North Sea coast towns by German battleships, and scanned the sky watching for the coming of the aërial invasion her people so much feared, have reflected on the pathos of those lines so often quoted:
"Of all sad things of tongue or pen,The saddest are these, it might have been."
"Of all sad things of tongue or pen,The saddest are these, it might have been."
Shall we learn by their experience, or shall we follow in England's footsteps and have the same sort of an awakening?
The same identical influences and traits of human character that drove the Homecrofters from Scotland will be responsiblefor our failure to take warning from England's lesson, if we do so fail. It is the disposition of intrenched interests to grasp for more and more, and constantly more, that has imperiled England's national life. The same grasping policy of the intrenched interests in the United States now imperils the national life of this nation in the future by the absorption of our national resources and what remains of our public domain into private speculative ownership while the toiling millions are crowded into the tenements. We could survive the loss of what the intrenched interests have already taken if they would only let loose on what is left and let Uncle Sam have a free hand to do with his own as is best for all his people in places like the Colorado River country. There the greater part of the land needed is still public land, and speculators have not as yet acquired the water rights and power possibilities.
England could not and the United States cannot maintain a great standing army, but England could have established and maintained a Homecroft Reserve of amillion men in Scotland, and we can do it in the Colorado River Valley, and other places where it ought to be done in the United States, provided the land and water power can be saved from the clutch of the speculators before they have so complicated the proposition as to interminably delay it while Uncle Sam is getting back from them what ought never to have been granted away.
England had the Scotch Homecrofters, and drove them from the homes of their forefathers to make great estates. We have got to organize our Homecroft Reservists and locate them, and train them, but that can be done.
There are thousands of the descendants of the Scotch Homecrofters serving England to-day in the Canadian Contingent Corps in Europe, and doubtless more than one of the crew of the Australian Cruiser that sunk the Emden could trace his pedigree back to a Galloway Drover, a Solway Smuggler, or a Border Raider. From the shielings of the Scotch Homecrofters there went out into the world a race that has made good, wherever it hasgone. Would it not be well to think of that in the United States to-day and breed some more of the same sturdy Homecroft Stock in this country, for patriotic service either in peace or war?
It was the active out-of-door life that made the Scotch Homecrofters strong. It is the sedentary, indoor life, or the monotony of factory work, that is now sapping the vitality of our people and working havoc with our racial strength. The pity of it is that we have a country where we can reproduce the strong races of many different countries, if we would only recognize that the necessity for doing it is the biggest and most important national problem we have. We can match the country and the people where nearly every big thing for the real uplift of humanity has been done in recent years.
The Colorado River Drainage Basin has many characteristics like Australia, where they have adopted a very similar system of Land Reclamation and Settlement and the plan for Universal Military Service that is advocated in this book. We can duplicate Switzerland in WestVirginia. We can match Belgium and Holland in Louisiana. We can do in Northern Minnesota what they have done in Denmark. We have many of the same problems in California that they have solved in New Zealand.
The fact should be carefully borne in mind, and never for a moment lost sight of, that everything that is advocated in the plan proposed in this book for national defense is something that would be chosen as a thing to be done if it had been determined to carry out the most splendid plan that could be devised for human advancement and national welfare in time of peace in the United States. Such a plan, having regard only to times of peace, would embody the entire plan advocated in this book. Even the military training of entire Homecroft communities, so as to be prepared for that emergency in case of war, is a discipline that would be most beneficial to physical and mental development in time of peace, without any regard to its importance in the event of war. It is most remarkable that all this should be true, but the basic reason forit is that, after all, the highest ultimate objective of national existence in time of peace is to continually lift humanity to higher and higher levels of physical and mental development; and to persevere until we attain the highest possible type of rugged physical and mental strength in man and woman. When war comes, the thing most needed is men—strong, vigorous, and hardy men; and they are the ideal at which all plans for racial development should aim in time of peace.
The Homecroft System of Life and Education eliminates the difficulties arising from a reliance in time of war on untrained levies in a country like ours, where so few are physically fit, without long training, for soldierly service. The Homecrofter, earning his living by digging it from the ground, is always strong and instantly fit for a soldier's work. The Homecrofter lives under conditions where he is not a cog in a wheel—not a part of any complicated industrial machine from which no part can be withdrawn without derangement of the whole. He is an independent unit in industry, self-sustaining,dependent on no one and no one dependent on him but his own family. If he is called away for military service, the family is able to conduct and cultivate the Homecroft, and gets its living therefrom. No one is left in need, as would so often happen in other cases, especially when State Militia might be called into real service. The Homecrofter earns his living in a way that makes it practicable for him to leave his accustomed vocation for a month or two every year for a period of military training without any prejudice or loss to him in that vocation.
The more these advantages of the Homecroft Reserve System are studied from a military point of view, the more their value will be appreciated. A rural nation like Servia or Montenegro can be practically a nation of soldiers. Every man of military age is always ready for service. The Russian Cossack System accomplishes the same result. A nation of shopkeepers, commercial clerks, and factory employees cannot be utilized in that way for military service. The farming and rural population of the United Statesfurnishes a better hope for a Citizen Soldiery in case of war than our city population, but in these days a farm has come to be really a factory, with complicated machinery, requiring training to operate it, and a chronic shortage of labor in busy seasons. Furthermore, rural population is as a rule so scattered that it would not be possible in time of peace to perfect the organization and give the Reservists the training necessary to prepare them for service in time of war and have them always ready for immediate action.
In the Homecroft Communities a million men may be almost as close together all the time as though they were in a Concentration Camp in time of war. The organization of every company and regiment would be complete, officers and all, constantly in touch and working together to promote peace and do the work of peace but ready to do the work of war at any time if need be. Officers in the Homecroft Reserve should be Homecrofters, trained in all the military knowledge necessary, but also trained as Homecrofters and getting their living that way.
It has often been said both of this country and of England that the country must not be turned into an armed camp, like the Continent of Europe. The fear is well grounded that if that were done the military spirit would soon dominate the nation and plunge it into all the evils of Militarism, with the danger always to be feared of an ultimate military despotism.
The plan for a Homecroft Reserve entirely eliminates that objection. A great Homecroft community comprising a million acre Homecrofts, tilled and lived on by a million trained Homecroft Reservists, in the Colorado River Valley, would make no militaristic impression on the character of the people at large in the United States as a whole. And the same statement would hold good, if another similar Homecroft Reserve of a million men on a million acres in each State were established in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys in California, another in Louisiana, another in Minnesota, and another in West Virginia.
And yet this immense Homecroft Reserve, aggregating an army of five millionmen in time of war, and ready at any time for instant service, would make the United States the most potentially powerful military nation in the world.
The lesson of this last great war will be learned, before it is over, by all the nations of the world. That lesson is thatmen, men of reckless daring and dauntless bravery, men utterly indifferent to their own lives when they can be sacrificed to save the nation, men like the Belgian gardeners who have fought for their homeland in this war, men like the Japanese gardeners who threw away their lives against Port Arthur, men like the Scotch Homecrofters who charged with the Scots Greys at Waterloo and have fought through the fierce carnage of a hundred bloody battlefields to sustain and build Britain's Empire Power; such men as the Minute Men of Concord or the Southern Chevaliers who rode with Marion; such men as those who fought with Jackson at New Orleans, whether they were Lafitte's smugglers and pirates from Barataria Bay or Mountaineers from other state or planters from the greatsugar plantations of Louisiana,men who, all of them, are fighting for their homes and their country, constitute a defense that rises above all others in strength and is the most powerful mobile force in modern warfare. Armed and equipped and organized they must be, and fired with the desperate valor that can be born only of patriotic devotion to a great cause; but when you have such men, and enough of them, no modern machinery of war, or engines of destruction, or fortifications can overcome them or stand against them. They are a force as irresistible as the eruption of a mighty volcano.
Those are some of the things to set to the credit of the plan for a Homecroft Reserve if needed for national defense in time of war.
Now measure their value in time of peace, for national defense against the evil forces that are gnawing at the very vitals of our national existence by degenerating our racial strength and physical and mental power as a people.
There is a remedy for the physical degeneracy caused by congested cities.That remedy is that the populations of such cities shall be scattered into the suburbs where every family can have a home in which they can live in contact with nature. It must be a home with a garden, where they can, if need be, get their living from their own Homecroft. The Homecroft should be the principal source of livelihood for every family,—the factory employment, or the wage earned from it, should be secondary. This one condition, wherever it is brought into existence for an entire community, will end all labor conflicts and disturbances. The most pernicious and poisonous influence in American thought to-day starts from the minds of employers of labor who, sometimes perhaps subconsciously, think they must control labor by having the working people always on the edge of the precipice of starvation. The idea that the wage earner can only be controlled by being kept in a position of personal dependence and subserviency is as medieval, inhuman, and barbarously wrong as was the idea that human slavery was necessary for the control of labor.
We have achieved religious liberty, political liberty, civil liberty, and personal liberty, but industrial liberty remains yet to be accomplished. Industrial slavery is the corner stone of our industrial edifice. It will continue so as long as the lives of great multitudes of wageworkers revolve around ajob, and they know no other way to supply human needs but a wage. Better men will give better service, and employers will get better results, when every wage earner is located on a Homecroft from which he can in any hour of need provide the entire living for himself and family.
That condition is the only permanent remedy for unemployment. When all wage earners—all men and women—in this country are trained Homecrofters, able to build a house and furnish it themselves by their own skill and knowing how to get their living from one acre, whenever need be, the Homecroft life will be the universal life of the working people,and there will be no unemployment.
Unemployment will continue so long as there is a great mass of floating labor,living from day to day on a wage while it lasts, and starving when it stops. No scheme can be devised that will end the miseries caused by unemployment, so long as that system of a floating mass of workers is perpetuated. Human genius cannot prevent the ebb and flow of prosperity. Eras of depression are inevitable. When they come, thousands will be out of employment. Labor Bureaus, private or public, will not change that condition, because they cannot create jobs where none exist. It is philanthropy and not business for an employer to retain men out of sympathy for them when he does not need their labor. Philanthropy is a poor foundation on which to try to build any economic structure. Better by far have every workingman a Homecrofter, whose labor is needed on his homecroft, in home-garden or home-workshop, whenever it is not needed in some wage-earning employment.
The labor of women and children in factories, aside from all other considerations, is an economic waste, from the broad standpoint of the highest welfareand prosperity for all the people. Any woman who is a trained Homecrofter is worth more in dollars and cents per day or per week for what she can produce from that homecroft than she can earn in any factory. The same is true of every child old enough to seek factory employment. Homecroft women and Homecroft children will never work in factories, and whenever their labor cannot be had the labor of men will be substituted and the whole world will be the better for it when that time comes.
But what has all this to do with a Homecroft Reserve?
It has much to do with it.
Every community of Homecrofters created to enlarge and maintain the Homecroft Reserve, would be a training school for Homecrofters. The term of enlistment for the educational training furnished by these great National Institutions for the training of Homecrofters would be five years. Each organized community would be practically a separate Homecroft village. Every one that was organized would make it easier toorganize the next. Public interest would grow and the popular demand would force the rapid expansion of the plan as soon as its benefits in the field of the education of the people were realized—just as happened in the case of the rural free mail delivery.
Whenever the nation starts, as is advocated in this book, to immediately establish a Homecroft Reserve of 100,000 in the Colorado River Country near Yuma; 100,000 in the San Joaquin Valley in California; 100,000 in Louisiana; 100,000 in West Virginia; and 100,000 in Minnesota,—500,000 in all,—and gets that part of its work for national defense done, each 100,000 will be rapidly extended to 1,000,000. That will mean that there will be 5,000,000 enlisted Homecroft Reservists being trained as soldiers of peace as well as soldiers for war—being trained to produce food for man with a hoe as well as to defend their country, if need arises, with a gun. Every Homecrofter and his entire family will bestudents, learning to be Homecrofters, all of them, and taking a five years' course. One fifthof the total 5,000,000 would be enlisted and the same number graduated every year.
What would be the result?
Every year, year after year, 1,000,000 trained, scientific Homecrofters—trained in home-handicraft, and in fruit-culture, truck-gardening, berry-growing, poultry-raising, and in putting all their products in shape for marketing, whether in their own stomachs or in the markets of the world—would be graduated from these Homecroft villages comprising the Homecroft Reserves. Each would have had a five years' course in that training—a year longer than required for an ordinary college course and of infinitely more practical value to them than a college course.
They would pay for the use and occupancy of the Homecroft, and for the instruction they would receive, a sum sufficient to cover all the cost of providing the instruction, and six per cent on the value of the Homecroft, four per cent interest and two per cent to go to a sinking fund that would equal the value of the Homecroft in fifty years. The governmentwould get back every dollar it invested, with interest, and make the profit between the cost of the Homecroft and its fixed ultimate value of $1,000. That value would be from twenty to thirty per cent profit on the original investment by the government.
Every one of the 1,000,000 Homecroft families that would be graduated every year would go out into the great field of our national life and activity, looking first for a Homecroft and second for employment in some industrial vocation.
Now how many of our people are there who can be induced to sit down and hold their heads in their hands until they have stopped the whirl in which most of their minds are involved, long enough to seriously weigh the difference in value to the country and to every industrial and commercial interest of 1,000,000 such trained homecrofters, compared with the 1,000,000 untrained and ignorant foreign immigrants whom we have been swallowing up every year for so many years in the maw of our congested cities?
One million trained Homecrofters, withtheir families, coming each year into the social and industrial life of the whole people, scattering into every community where labor was needed, would in a comparatively few years solve every social problem and rescue the nation from its danger of eventual destruction by human congestion, the tenement life, and racial degeneracy. The graduated Homecrofters could never be induced to go into the congested tenement districts. They would insist on living in Homecrofts in the suburbs of the cities.
The nation ought to adopt immediately the whole system of establishing Homecroft communities as training schools for 5,000,000 Homecrofters, from which 1,000,000 would be graduated every year, without any regard to the value of the plan for a Reserve for national defense. It should be done, if for nothing else, to check the congestion of humanity in cities, create individual industrial independence, end unemployment, end woman labor in factories, end child labor, and insure social stability and the perpetuity of the nation.
Map showing the Drainage Basin of the Colorado River and the Corrected Boundary Line and Neutral Zone between the United States and Mexico. The area of the Drainage Basin of the Colorado River is 265,000 square miles. Japan has an area of 147,655 square miles. That is a territory smaller than the area of the Colorado River Drainage Basin in Arizona and New Mexico.Map showing the Drainage Basin of the Colorado River and the Corrected Boundary Line and Neutral Zone between the United States and Mexico. The area of the Drainage Basin of the Colorado River is 265,000 square miles. Japan has an area of 147,655 square miles. That is a territory smaller than the area of the Colorado River Drainage Basin in Arizona and New Mexico.
In the Colorado River Valley in Arizona and California, and in the State of Nevada, the national government already owns large tracts of land and controls the locations required for power development. The work that could be done immediately in establishing Homecroft Reserves on those public lands, would reclaim vast areas of arid lands and develop water power that would have a value far beyond the cost of the work. The financial advantages to the government would be strikingly demonstrated by the work done in those places. The danger of the occupation of California, Oregon, and Washington by a Japanese invading force, before we could mobilize an army on the Pacific Coast, would be entirely removed at a large and steadily increasing profit to our government.
That may seem incredible to the average reader but it is none the less true. Its truth arises from the fact that the enormous values in productive land and inwater power that can be created have as yet no existence. They must be brought into existence by human labor, and large initial expenditures. Those expenditures are too large to be possible through the investment of private capital. When done by the national government, the profits would be large in proportion to the large original investment.
The national government should, without any delay, declare its policy to reserve to itself all water rights and water power resources in the Colorado River Canyon. It should reserve for its own operations all public land in the main valley of the Colorado River below the Canyon. It should resume ownership of every acre of land in that territory that has been heretofore located and is as yet unreclaimed or unsettled. That land should be acquired under a system similar to the Australian system, by purchase under an agreement as to price. If the acquisition of any of the land in that way proves impracticable, private rights in the land should be condemned exactly as would private rights in land needed for forts or fortifications.
The rapid development and settlement of the Colorado River Valley along the lines herein advocated is a measure of national defense and urgently so. Every year's delay brings the converging lines of possible friction between the United States and Japan closer together. Whatever system we may adopt for national defense in that direction should be so quickly adopted that the safeguards developed by it will be of rapid growth. This is more particularly important if we look at the matter from the right standpoint, and appreciate that what we do is done ratherto prevent warthan to insure victory in case of war. We will never have a war with Japan unless it is the result of our own heedless indifference, apathetic neglect, and inexcusable unpreparedness.
Immense tracts of land in the Colorado River Valley are still owned by the national government which are capable of reclamation. Having resumed ownership of all unsettled or unreclaimed lands in the valley now in private ownership, the Government should lay out a great system for the storage of the flood waters ofthe Colorado River in the canyon of the river. The water should be utilized to reclaim at least five million acres in California and Arizona.
The works necessary for the reclamation of at least a million acres of this land should be carried to completion with all possible expedition. This one million acres should be brought to the highest stage of reclamation and cultivation, subdivided into Homecrofts of one acre each, and as rapidly as possible settled by men with families who either already know or are willing to learn how to get a comfortable living for a family from one acre of land in the Colorado River Valley.
The Australian system of land reclamation and settlement should be applied to the colonization of these acre-garden farms or Homecrofts. On every one of them a house and outbuildings adapted to the climate should be built, costing not over $500. That is all that would be necessary in the way of buildings. Shade rather than shelter is needed and it is more important to provide ways to keep cool than ways to keep out the cold. Lifeis lived practically out-of-doors all the year round.
These Homecroft settlements should be organized in communities of not less than one thousand each and, in advance of settlement, schoolhouses adapted to the climate and all necessary roads and transportation facilities should be brought into existence. The price to be paid for the right of occupancy of each acre Homecroft during the five year period of enlistment in the Educational System of the Homecroft Reserve Service, should be based, not on the cost, but onthe full value of the reclaimed land and its appurtenant water right plus the entire investment for house and community improvements and the overhead expense of its development.
No cash payment should be required from the settler. He should only pay the fixed annual rental for use and occupation from year to year. The test of his acceptability as an applicant would be his physical fitness for the labor required in the development of that country, as well as for possible military service in the event of war. The most importantquestion would be his ability, with the help of his family, and with the instruction that would be given to all, to so cultivate and manage his acre Homecroft as to produce from it all the food needed by the family throughout the year. The first consideration in putting such a settler on the land would be the willingness of himself and family to do that one thing above all others and thereby demonstrate the practicability of the plan.
There would thus be brought into existence something rare among American institutions—an independent and self-sustaining community of a million men of military age with families from whom the mainstay of every family would be available for military service without interference with complex commercial or industrial conditions, and without in the slightest degree subjecting the family to possible privation from lack of food, shelter, or raiment. The question of raiment in the Colorado River Valley involves, if necessity exists for economy, an expense so small as to be negligible. If the men from such a community were absent forfive years in military service, the sale of surplus products and poultry in excess of the family needs for food, that could be produced from the acre, would amply supply the need of the family for clothes, and all their other necessary requirements.
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 ownership 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 ownership.
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 themesas 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 Californiain 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 retarding or destroying rail communication. The assured 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 tothe 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 assurance of Peace. Neither Japan nor any other nation would ever seriously consider undertaking to land an army anywhere on the shores 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 Nevadafar 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 leadingfrom 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 Institutions for Instruction—Homecroft Institutes—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. Coöperative 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 waterover 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 coöperate 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 ofhorses 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 thepublic lands an area of grazing lands which they could use through the formation of a coöperative grazing association, such as have been so successfully conducted in some of the other grazing States.
In this connection, it may be interesting in passing 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 politicalbodies 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, wouldhave a population of at least five million citizens and their families, of the highest and most intelligent class 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 shores 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 assurance we could have against the breaking out of a war which otherwise might well occur becauseof our hopelessly inadequate regular standing army and our utter unpreparedness so long as we have no adequate force of citizen soldiery.
A citizen soldiery is what we must undoubtedly have in this country, but it must be a citizen soldiery trained and inured at all times in advance to the real hardships of war. They must have the physical stamina necessary to endure such hardships. They must be kept at all times physically fit by the labor of their daily life and the occupations whereby they earn their bread. They must be trained thoroughly and well in time of peace, as it is contemplated they shall be trained under the military system of Switzerland and Australia. That system would to a large extent be the model which would be the guide for the creation of the Homecroft Reserve, except that under the latter system the regular annual training period would be longer and the training more thorough and complete. It would be sufficiently so to make a reservist in every way the equal, so far as training goes, of a soldier in the regular army.
The creation of a great Military Reserve under the plan proposed for a Homecroft Reserve in the Colorado River Valley for the national defense would require, for its complete and satisfactory fruition, the acquisition by the United States of the territory through which the Colorado River now flows from the present boundary line to the Gulf of California and extending around the head of the Gulf of California.
The Gulf of California should be made neutral waters forever, by treaty between the United States and Mexico, and this treaty should be agreed to by all the nations of the world. The neutral waters thus created should extend far enough into the open sea so that all commerce from the shores of the Gulf of California or reaching the markets of the world through that waterway from any of the vast interior territory embraced in the drainage basin of the Colorado River, could at any time reach the ocean highways of commerce without danger of being waylaid by the hostile ships of war of any nation.
The territory which the United States should thus acquire from Mexico by peaceful agreement and purchase should include the section of land lying north of the most southerly line of New Mexico and Arizona, which runs through or very close to Douglas, Naco, and Nogales, extended due west to and across the Gulf of California and thence to the Pacific Ocean. The land lying north and east of this line and the Gulf of California and Colorado River should become a part of Arizona. The land lying north of the same line and extending from the Colorado River and the Gulf of California on the east to the Pacific Ocean on the west, should become a part of the State of California.
A neutral zone should be created, south of and parallel to the boundary line between the United States and Mexico, extending all the way from the Pacific Coast to the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Rio Grande River. This neutral zone should be controlled by an International Commission.
That commission should also havejurisdiction to determine any controversies that might arise with reference to the Gulf of California. They should have the same jurisdiction over that neutral sea zone as over the neutral land zone. The jurisdiction of such an International Commission might well be extended to cover all controversies that might arise between the United States and Mexico, as to which it might be given full powers as an International Commission of Conciliation or Arbitration, whenever such disputed question was referred to it by the Executive or Legislative authority of either government, and in all cases before an actual declaration of war should be made by either country against the other.
Such an agreement would be of inestimable advantage to both countries, and would more than compensate Mexico for the transfer to the United States of the little corner of land which should be a part of Arizona and California. It is of no possible benefit to Mexico to hang on to it. Its acquisition by the United States is vital to its safe development. Its ownership by Mexico puts the great populationthat will eventually live in the valley of the Colorado River in the same position with reference to their national outlet to the sea that the people of the Mississippi Valley would be in, if some other nation owned the mouth of the Mississippi River, or that New York would occupy if, for instance, Germany or France owned Long Island and Staten Island and the territory immediately adjacent to the Narrows and Long Island Sound on the mainland.
If the peace advocates in the United States, who limit their energies to the establishment of the machinery for arbitration or conciliation, would go one step farther and work out such a plan as that suggested above for getting rid of a national controversy before it becomes acute, they would render invaluable service to their country. The ownership of the delta of the Colorado River and the head of the Gulf of California is one of those certain points of danger that should be removed. The people of Mexico must realize that, and the creation of a neutral zone and the neutralization of the Gulf ofCalifornia would be of infinitely greater value to Mexico than the small tract she would transfer to the United States could ever be under any circumstances. For Mexico to continue to hold it, creates a constant danger of friction or conflict which would be entirely removed if it were taken over by the United States.
The situation now is exactly as though one man owned the doorway to another man's house. He could make no real beneficial use of it except to embarrass the owner of the house. Such a situation can only result in controversy. Is it not possible that the advocates of national arbitration and conciliation or of an International Court can be induced to see this and use their efforts to accomplish a great national benefit that is entirely practicable? The plan above proposed would have all the merits claimed for International Arbitration and Conciliation and for an International Peace Tribunal. That is what the proposed International Peace Commission between this country and Mexico would be, in fact, and its value and success being demonstratedin one place where it could be practically put in operation, it would be much easier to get the same plan adopted in wider fields by other nations, and perhaps gradually evolve a world-wide system for an International Peace Tribunal that way.
Another change that should be made in existing boundary lines to facilitate the development of the resources of that country and its settlement by a dense population, is shown by the map on the following page. State lines in the arid region should have been located, so far as possible, where they would have followed the natural boundaries of hydrographic basins. When early errors can be now corrected with advantage to the people it should be done. The development of Northern California would be facilitated by separating it from Southern California at the Tehachapi Mountains. Then the great problem of the reclamation and settlement of the 12,500,000 acres in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys could be solved much easier than as the state is now constituted. It would also be to the advantage of Southern California to be able to deal with its vast problems of irrigation development without being complicated with those of Northern California.