Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace Part 7

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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sured 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 j.a.pan 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 munic.i.p.alities 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 mult.i.tude 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 ca.n.a.ls, 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 const.i.tuted one of the greatest empires of the world have succ.u.mbed 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 sh.o.r.es 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 k.n.o.bbed 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 gra.s.s. 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, d.y.k.ed 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 quant.i.ties 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 j.a.panese. The j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan 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 j.a.pan, those perennial streams still flow from every hillside and mountain, feeding the myriad of ca.n.a.ls with which her fertile fields are laced and interlaced.

The result is that on only 12,500,000 acres of intensively cultivated soil j.a.pan sustains a rural population of 30,000,000 people.

The power of j.a.pan as a nation lies in the racial strength of her people.