Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace

by George Hebard Maxwell

Second, the sediment carried by the water could be settled across a strip ten miles wide, which could be thereby brought to a level and its fertility enormously enriched by these sedimentary deposits which it would receive only in years of great floods. In the meantime and in other years the land could be used for meadow, or for the production of crops which could be grown after the danger of overflow in any season had passed.

This ten-mile wide wasteway, supplemented by the auxiliary flood water channel paralleling its eastern embankment on the east, would completely control and carry to the Gulf all the excess flood water in years of extreme floods, and hold the high water level of the Mississippi River from Old River to the Gulf at an absolutely fixed level above which the river would never rise.

The ten-mile wide wasteway could be extended north from the mouth of Red River to the bluffs at Helena. Then from Helena south the entire Mississippi Valley would be protected against danger from floods in the Mississippi River in the extraordinary flood years which may come only once in a generation, and yet may come in any two consecutive years as they did in 1912 and 1913. If this ten-mile wide wasteway, with its auxiliary flood water channel paralleling it, between it and the river, were constructed from Helena to the mouth of the Red River, and thence to the Gulf of Mexico, and in turn supplemented by source stream control of the floods of the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers, the lowlands of the Mississippi Valley could be made as safe from overflow or damage by devastating floods as the highlands of the Hudson River or the dry plains of eastern Colorado. The entire area of the Mississippi River Valley now subject to overflow is about 29,000 square miles. This is an area one-third larger than the entire cultivated area of the Empire of Japan, which sustains a farming population of 30,000,000 people. The lands of the Mississippi River Valley are infinitely richer and of greater natural fertility than the farming lands of Japan. Every acre of the rich sedimentary soil of the Delta of the Mississippi River would, if intensively cultivated, produce food enough to feed a family of five, with a large surplus over for distribution to the world's food markets.

The entire 1,000,000 acres to be acquired by the national government in Louisiana should be immediately acquired within the area bounded on the south by the great embankment along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and on the west by the great wasteway and auxiliary flood channel to be built from the mouth of Red River to Atchafalaya Bay and on the north and east by the Mississippi River.

This entire territory would be so absolutely and completely protected from all possibility of overflow by the proposed system of protection from floods or overflow and from Gulf Storms that any part of it could be safely subdivided into acre-garden-homes or Homecrofts. Every acre would be adequate for the support of a family when properly reclaimed, fertilized, and intensively cultivated. The variety of food that would be available for the people living on these one million Homecrofts would be greater probably than would be within the reach of people living in any other section of the world. The mild and equable climate would make practicable a successful growth of every possible product of garden, orchard, or vineyard, including oranges and grape-fruit. Proximity to the Gulf and a network of canals that would lace and interlace the country in every direction would furnish them, at trifling cost or none at all, with the most delicious sea-foods, fish, crabs, shrimps, crayfish, and oysters without limit. Every canal and bayou would furnish its quota of fish and the oyster beds of the Louisiana coast are capable of almost limitless extension.

In addition to the cultivation of their Homecrofts for food from the ground, the Homecrofters enlisted in the Louisiana Homecroft Reserve would be afforded abundant occupation in catching or producing sea-food for themselves as well as for export. Anyone not familiar with the country can form no adequate conception of the stupendous possibilities of this bayou and Gulf coast country along this line of production and development.

More than this, the luggermen of the bayous and the Gulf are the best coast-wise and shallow sea sailors in the world, and the bays and bayous of Louisiana, if inhabited by a dense population, would once again breed a race of seafaring people—sailors and fishermen—to man our navy or merchant marine.

The complete adoption of the plan advocated for the reclamation and settlement of these swamp and overflowed lands, and the establishment there of a perpetual reserve available for military service whenever needed of a million seasoned and hardened citizen soldiers, involves doing nothing that has not already been done by other nations of the world.

Holland has built dikes as defenses against the inroads of the ocean greater even than those proposed in Louisiana, and the plans of Holland for reclaiming for agriculture vast areas of land now buried beneath the waters of the Zuyder Zee are much bolder in conception and more difficult of accomplishment.

Australia and New Zealand have both demonstrated the practicability and proved the success of a national policy of land acquisition and colonization. What Australia has done in the reclamation and settlement of her deserts, we can do not only on our deserts but also in our swamps.