Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace Part 14

This whole subject is exhaustively elucidated in "Fields, Factories and Workshops," by Prince Kropotkin, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons of New York. No one will form an opinion adverse to the possibilities of acreculture after reading that book.

Successful acreculture requires, however, _a man who knows how_. The j.a.panese know how. The Chinese know how. The Belgians know how. Many of the French, Germans, and Italians know how. The Americans, with few exceptions, do not know how, _but they can be taught_. They will seize the opportunity to learn as soon as it is open to them as part of a large national plan.

Every Homecroft Settlement created in the Colorado River Valley should be a great educational inst.i.tution, a training school to teach men and women how to raise fruit, vegetables, and poultry, and how to prepare their products for market, and how to market them, and how to get their own food from their own acre by their own labor.

_Thousands of the immigrants_ now coming to the United States from Southern Europe already know how to do all this and would make ideal colonists for the Colorado River Valley.

_Thousands are out of work_ who, if healthy and physically fit, could be trained to garden in a year; to be good gardeners in three years; and to be scientific experts in gardening in five years.

In the event of a war under existing conditions we would have to train a million recruits to be soldiers. It is equally certain that men can be trained to be gardeners and Homecrofters. It takes longer to train a Homecrofter than to train a soldier, but it is only a question of time.

It can be done and it will be done by the United States as a measure of national defense as soon as the people can be brought to realize the great fundamental fact that the only way they can provide as many soldiers as they might need in some great national emergency is to begin in time of peace--and that means _now_--and train them to be both Homecrofters and soldiers, as the j.a.panese are trained. The j.a.panese are a nation of Homecrofters. The Homecroft Reservists who should be trained for national defense by the United States, will get their living as gardeners and Homecrofters when they are not needed as soldiers, or until they are needed as soldiers, as is the case in j.a.pan with their organized reserve of 1,170,000 men and the great majority of their unorganized reserve of 7,021,780 men.

The Drainage Basin of the Colorado River has an area of 265,000 square miles. j.a.pan has an area of 147,655 square miles, less than the area of the drainage basin of the Colorado River in Arizona and New Mexico. Arizona alone contains 143,956 square miles, and has a population of only 204,354.

j.a.pan has a population of 52,200,200. She now sustains in the Home Country a standing army at peace strength of 217,032, with Reserves of 1,170,000, making a total war strength of about 1,400,000 and she has available for duty but unorganized a total of 7,021,780.

The same j.a.panese System with the same j.a.panese population in the Colorado River Drainage Basin would sustain an army of the same strength. And they can do it on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, or on the Pacific Coast of South America, or anywhere else in as good a climate where they can get a territory of 147,000 square miles, of which 12,500,000 acres can be irrigated and intensively cultivated.

_Is it not evident that it is the economic potentialities of the j.a.panese race that we must meet?_

We can do it in the Colorado River Country. In the main valley below the mouth of the Colorado Canyon we can maintain a permanent reserve of 5,000,000 men, Homecrofters and gardeners in time of peace, soldiers in time of war, and all organized, trained, and equipped--instantly ready for any emergency. All we would have to do to accomplish that, would be to reclaim and colonize the land, and train the colonists to be Homecrofters, and then apply the entire Military System of Switzerland or Australia to this one small tract of five million acres of land in the Colorado River Valley, with conveniently adjacent territory in Arizona and California in the drainage basin of the Colorado River.

It would be entirely practicable to do that, because the National Government would control the School System, and would control the System of Life of the community and adapt it to the Homecroft Reserve System. Every one of 5,000,000 Homecrofters could leave his acre without hindrance to any organized industry and without jeopardizing the welfare of his family. The objections to a Reserve of Citizen Soldiery in the ordinary communities of the United States would have no application in these communities that had been created for the purpose of furnis.h.i.+ng soldiers trained when needed in time of war, as well as to develop the highest type of citizens.h.i.+p in time of peace.

A start could be made with 100,000 acres; 100,000 gardeners; 100,000 soldiers. The land and water required for that could be located to-morrow and construction work begun in a month. This number should be increased as rapidly as the land could be reclaimed and colonized with Homecrofters in acre homes and the organization of new communities perfected. The Reserve composed of Homecrofters occupying these acre homes should be known as the Homecroft Reserve.

If no extension of this proposed Homecroft Reserve System were made into any other section of the country there would be soldiers enough in the Colorado River Valley to defend the Mexican Border, the Pacific Coast, and the Canadian Border from North Dakota to Seattle, at any time when the necessity arose for such defense.

The establishment of this large Homecroft Reserve in the Colorado River Valley, fully trained and equipped for military service at a moment's notice, exactly as the Reserves of Switzerland are trained and equipped, would be a complete defense against any danger of j.a.panese invasion, which can be safeguarded against in no other way.

_Is it not better to begin now and spend the money in conquering the Desert than to wait and spend it conquering j.a.pan, or j.a.pan and China combined?_

CHAPTER VIII

_The value of the proposed Homecroft Reserve System as a force for national defense would have been demonstrated in the present European War if England had, years ago, established such a reserve in Scotland, instead of driving thousands of Homecrofters to other lands to make way for deer parks and hunting grounds. The Scotch Homecrofters, if that system for a Military Reserve had been established, would have been just such soldiers as those who have made the glorious record of the Black Watch and the Gordon Highlanders and other famous Scotch regiments. There might just as well as not have been a million of them in Scotland, trained and hardy soldiers, organized and equipped as the Reserves of Switzerland are completely organized to-day and ready for instant mobilization. The Scotch Homecrofters would have been getting their living in time of peace by cultivating their little crofts, and as fishermen, and would have been always ready to fight for their country in time of war._

Had there been such a Homecroft Reserve in Scotland, with a million men enlisted in it and fully organized, officered, and equipped for instant service in the field, Germany would have pondered long before starting this war. Would not the German people, as well as the English, be glad now if the war had never been started? But if, notwithstanding all this, the war had been started, an army of a million brave and hardy Scots would have been on the firing line before the German columns had got past Louvain.

Belgium would have been protected from devastation. There would have been no invasion of France.

But the English people stubbornly refused to heed warnings of the danger of war with Germany.

_We are doing the same with reference to j.a.pan._

The English with stolid, self-satisfied complacency pinned their faith entirely on their navy as a national defense.

_We are doing practically the same thing, with reference to j.a.pan._

And now the English have been awakened by an appalling national catastrophe which was preventable.

_Must we be awakened in the same way?_

A Scotch Homecroft Reserve of a million men would have been an almost certain guarantee that no war would have broken out; and if it had, such a Homecroft Reserve would have been worth to England the billions of dollars she is now spending in a paroxysm of haste to train a million soldiers for service on the continent and to conduct the war. The Scotch Homecroft Reserve would have had the added value of being thoroughly trained and hardened troops as compared with the new levies they are now training to be soldiers. Those raw levies of volunteers, many from clerical employments, lack the qualities that would have been furnished by the Scotch Highlanders, or the descendants of forty generations of border-raiders, or the hardy fishermen of the Sea Coast and Islands of Scotland. Some idea of the sort of men who would have composed this Scotch Homecroft Reserve that England might have had, may be gained from the following very brief story of the Gordon Highlanders which appeared in the "Kansas City Times" of October 27, 1914:

"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 dare When 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 d.u.c.h.ess,' 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 made all Great Britain ring with their praises.

Their first laurels, won at a b.l.o.o.d.y cost, have never been dimmed.

"From Holland they went to Egypt, and with the Black Watch, the Cameronians and the Perths.h.i.+re Greybreeks stormed up the sh.o.r.e 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 c.o.c.k 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 back into 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 d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond, a daughter of the d.u.c.h.ess 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 checked the 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.