Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace

by George Hebard Maxwell

The construction work of the Forest Service should be done by a Construction Corps enlisted in that Service. Every forester should be a reservist. A regularly enlisted force of fire-fighters and tree-planters should be organized—tens of thousands of them—to fight forest fires and to fight deserts and floods by planting forests. The planting and care of new forests should be done by regularly organized companies of enlisted men, detailed for that work, exactly as they would be detailed for a soldier's duties in time of war.

The work of the Reclamation Service should be done, not by hired contractors, but by a Construction Corps of men enlisted in that Service. They should be set to work building all the works necessary to reclaim every acre of desert land and every acre of swamp or overflow land that can be reclaimed in the United States.

The cost of all reclamation work done by the national government should be charged against the land and repaid with interest from the date of the investment. The interest charge should be no more than the government would have to pay on the capital invested, with an additional annual charge sufficient to form a sinking fund that would repay the principal in fifty years.

The work of the Forest Service as well as that of the Reclamation Service should be put on a business basis. New forests should be planted where their value when matured will equal the investment in their creation, with interest and cost of maintenance.

The same system of enlisting a Construction Corps to do all construction work should be adopted in every department of the national government which is doing or should be doing the vast volume of construction work which stands waiting at every hand. Each branch should have its regularly enlisted Construction Corps.

All the different branches of the government dealing in any way with forestry or with the conservation, use, or control of water, in the War Department, Interior Department, Agricultural Department, or Commerce Department, should be coördinated and brought together in a Board of River Regulation. The coördination 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 coördinating Board of River Regulation.

The duty of the men enlisted in the National Construction Reserve would be not only to do the work allotted to them, but to do it in such a way as to dignify labor in all the works of peace. It should show the patriotic spirit with which work in the public service can be done to protect the country from Nature's devastations. It should demonstrate that such work can be done in time of peace, with the same energy and enthusiasm that prevail in time of war.

But in case of war, the National Construction Reserve must be so organized that it can be instantly transformed into an army of trained and seasoned soldiers—soldiers that can beat their plowshares into swords at a day's notice, and as quickly beat the swords back into plowshares when weapons are no longer needed.

In the development of this idea lies the assured safety of this nation against the dangers of unpreparedness in the event of war. There will be more than work enough for such a Construction Reserve to do in time of peace for generations yet to come.

Such floods as those which swept through the Mississippi Valley in 1912 and 1913 are an invasion by Nature's forces. They bring ruin to thousands and devastate vast areas. They overwhelm whole communities with losses as great as the destruction which would be caused by the invasion of an armed force.