Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace

by George Hebard Maxwell

Other reasons exist, however, which should not be lost sight of. There is no other available section close enough to Southern California where a force could be developed and maintained that could be brought into action for the defense of Southern California quickly enough to make it safe to rely upon its efficiency for that purpose with certainty. But an army of a million men could be marched from the Colorado River Valley to Los Angeles or any point in Southern California in much less time than troops could be transported across the Pacific Ocean.

To this end a great Military Highway should be built across the Imperial Valley to San Diego and thence to Los Angeles. Also another Military Highway paralleling the Southern Pacific Railroad from Yuma to Los Angeles with established stations for water supply on both routes at necessary intervals. These highways would in time of peace be a part of a transcontinental highway and would be constantly used by thousands of motor car travelers. No system of railroad or trolley transportation should be wholly depended on for the transportation of these troops. It should not be possible to check their advance by any interruption of traffic resulting from dynamiting bridges or tunnels or otherwise retarding or destroying rail communication. The assured safety to Southern California which would result from the proximity and readiness of the Homecroft Reserve would lie in the fact that every soldier from the Colorado River Valley could transport himself from his home to the point where he was needed, and be sure that he would get there in time to meet any invading force.

It may be argued that a million men instantly liable for military service to defend our Mexican border or defend Southern California against possible invasion is more than would be needed. Right there lies the incontestable assurance of Peace. Neither Japan nor any other nation would ever seriously consider undertaking to land an army anywhere on the shores of the Gulf of California or the Pacific Ocean for attack upon any section of the United States if a million soldiers stood ready to step to the colors and shoulder their guns and military equipment and give their services wherever needed to repel such an invasion.

Every man living under this Swiss-Australian Homecroft System of military service would be hardened and seasoned for the duties of that service. The activities of his life and the digging of his living from the ground would render him fit at all times for the heavy duties of soldiering. Not only would he be hardened to labor, but he would be inured to the trying climate of the Southwest, a climate so hot that people unaccustomed to it would melt in their tracks if they undertook any active physical labor under its blistering sun. Those who live in the climate, however, become readily acclimated to it, and are as satisfied with and loyal to the country as it is possible for human beings to be to the land of their home.

The plan of setting apart and developing this particular section of the country as a source of supply and place for the maintenance of an adequate citizen soldiery, would be strengthened by certain enlargements of the plan that would be entirely practicable from every point of view.

The period of the year when the men could best be spared from their homes for an interval of military training would be in the winter time. It would be found advisable, in training the men of the Colorado River Valley for military service, to move them once each year under military discipline to an encampment for field maneuvers at some point in Nevada far enough to the North to bring them within range of the cold winter climate to be found in many of the valleys of Nevada. The best possible training these men could have would be to march them with a full military equipment from the Colorado River Valley to this winter training ground, and then march them back again to their homes, once every year. That would be physical service that would qualify them for the hardest kind of long distance marching that they might be called upon to do in any event of actual warfare.

The stimulating effect of the cold winter climate of Nevada on men from the hot climate of the Colorado River Valley would be of immense physical advantage to them, besides hardening them to campaigning in a cold country, as they would be hardened already by their home environment to campaigning in a hot country. A military road should be constructed for such use all the way from Yuma to Central Nevada, and then extended north to a point where it would connect with an east and west national highway leading from Salt Lake City to Reno, Sacramento, and San Francisco.

There are other details which should be worked out to complete the comprehensive plan for the establishment and maintenance of such an adequate and efficient citizen soldiery. The most important of these would be the establishment of Institutions for Instruction—Homecroft Institutes—which would train not only the children but the parents as well, in every community subject to this system, in everything relating to the high type of land cultivation that would be necessary to the success of the plan. Coöperative methods in the distribution and sale of their surplus products should also be adopted.

With careful study of all the questions involved relating to physical and mental stamina and strength and its development in that climate, a racial type could be developed with as much physical endurance as that of the Mojave Indians who have lived for centuries in that country. In the old days, before there were railroads or telegraph lines, their couriers would run for sixty miles without water over the desert. They have powers of endurance exceeded probably by no other living race of men.

The settlements thus contemplated in the Colorado River Valley should be supplemented by the settlement, on Five Acre Homecrofts in Nevada, of as large a force of Homecrofters as might be needed for the Cavalry Arm of the entire Homecroft Reserves of the West and the Pacific Coast. This Homecroft Reserve Cavalry force should be located under the Australian system of land reclamation and settlement, and trained under the Australian system of universal military service. They should be located upon lands now owned by the national government or which could easily be acquired by it in various communities of anywhere from 100 to 1000 each, in all the valleys of the State of Nevada. That entire State has now a population of only 81,876 people, according to the census of 1910, and within its borders there are from three to five million acres of unoccupied and uncultivated lands, or land on which at present only hay or grain is grown, which could be subdivided into five acre farms and settled under the Australian land system by men with families who would get their living, each family from its five acres, and be there all the years of the future instantly ready at any time for military service whenever and wherever they might be called to the flag.