Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace

by George Hebard Maxwell

Annual encampments for field maneuvers for the other sections of the reserve should be established at least 400 miles distant from their regular permanent Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements.

The Roman soldiers were trained to march twenty miles in six hours and carry their heavy equipment. The Emperor Septimius Severus marched at the head of his army on foot and in complete armor for eight hundred miles from the Danube to Rome in forty days—twenty miles a day. Such a march, once every year, should be a part of the training of every soldier in the Homecroft Reserve.

There would be no difficulty in finding places in Texas adapted for the field maneuvers of the 1,000,000 men comprising the Homecroft Reserve in Louisiana, and the annual encampment of those in Minnesota could be located in Montana.

In West Virginia the country is mountainous and smaller units of organization would be more easily adapted to that State, as in Switzerland. In West Virginia the government would not acquire its entire million acres in one body. It would be scattered into many different sections of the State, in practically every valley, but more particularly in the rolling country lying between the mountains and the Ohio River, which stretches all the way from Wheeling to Huntington in West Virginia. If it were desirable to concentrate the entire million men in one annual concentration camp, the best location for it would be in the northern part of the peninsula of Michigan.

There are many reasons why West Virginia should be chosen for the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve for the eastern section of the United States. Its chief advantage is its central location, almost equi-distant between Maine and Florida and within marching distance from any point on the Atlantic seaboard, the Mississippi River, or the Great Lakes.

Switzerland could be reproduced in West Virginia, with the climatic and physical conditions of the two countries so much alike. The Swiss Military System could be applied to the entire State. With a million regularly enlisted Homecroft Reservists at all times ready for service, there would then be in addition a large unorganized reserve composed of graduates from the Homecroft Reserves or who had received a military training in the public schools. It would be entirely practicable to engraft the entire Swiss system of universal military training in the public schools on the school system of the State of West Virginia.

Switzerland has a total area of 15,975 square miles with a population of 3,741,971. West Virginia has an area of 24,170 square miles and a population of 1,221,119. The addition of 1,000,000 Homecroft Reservists to its population with their families, would bring the total population up to nearly twice that of Switzerland. The marvelous adaptability of West Virginia to the Homecroft idea and its possibilities as a fruit and vegetable and poultry producing country were fully set forth in an article in the "National Magazine" for December, 1913, which has been reprinted under its title, "West Virginia, the Land Overlooked," in a pamphlet issued by the Department of Agriculture of the State of West Virginia.

The following pertinent statements are made in that article: "Fifty years of amazing progress in West Virginia gives a new significance to her motto, 'Montani semper liberi,' meaning 'Mountaineers always freemen.' There is something in the environment and in the rugged scenery of the State that gives its people the freedom loving spirit of the Swiss." The "strategic importance" of the State is shown in these words: "A circle with a radius of two hundred and fifty miles makes West Virginia the center of all the markets laved by the waters of the Atlantic and the great lakes on the north. Within this circle is located the capital of the nation and twelve of the world's greatest cities."

With these facts in mind, anyone who will look at a map of the eastern half of the United States will agree that West Virginia is the right State in which to rear and train and concentrate the Reserve Force required for the defense of the east and the Atlantic seaboard.

The northern half of the State of Minnesota affords perhaps the most perfect adaptability of any section of the United States to the plan for a Homecroft Reserve of one million men to be located there. The national government now owns more than a million acres of land that could be reclaimed for this purpose. The national government also owns national forests in the State of Minnesota aggregating close to a million acres. The land needed for the 1,000,000 Homecrofts could be selected from land already owned by the government, or other lands could be acquired. That country is the original Homecroft section in the United States. The people of Duluth have tried it out and found it good. Anyone who wants proof of the possibilities of acre production needs only to go to Duluth and make some investigations there. He will find unquestionable records of acreage production of vegetables, running all the way from $1000 to $4000 an acre in one year.