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.
CHAPTER IX
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 in water 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 rather to prevent war than 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 of the Colorado River in the canyon of the river. The water should be utilized to reclaim at least five million acres in California and Arizona.