Our National Defense: The Patriotism of PeaceMaxwell, George Hebard
History
Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace
Maxwell, George Hebard
United States -- Defenses
Five acres of irrigated land intensively tilled will support a family
anywhere in Nevada, but supplementing the five cultivated acres in the
majority of cases, grazing privileges could be made appurtenant to the five
acre farm which would materially increase its value and facilitate the
establishment of an adequate Cavalry Service to be drawn from these Nevada
communities. Each community of Homecrofters enlisted in this Cavalry
Service should have set apart to them from the public lands an area of
grazing lands which they could use through the formation of a coöperative
grazing association, such as have been so successfully conducted in some of
the other grazing States.
In this connection, it may be interesting in passing to call attention to
the similarity which this system of a Citizen Cavalry Service would have to
the Cossack system in Russia. The Russian government maintains this
invaluable cavalry arm of the Empire's military power without other expense
than to furnish the arms and ammunition for each cavalryman, supplemented
by a money payment when in service in lieu of rations.
Land grants have been made to the Cossacks, in return for which they must
give the military service which is the condition upon which the land grant
was made. The total area of all these grants is in the neighborhood of
146,000,000 acres and many of the Cossack communities have been made
wealthy from the timber and mines on their lands. These Cossack communities
are self-governing political bodies within themselves, in all their local
affairs. Their term of service begins with early manhood and ends only when
they have reached the age of sixty. Their mode of life gives them all the
physical vigor that could be attained by constant service, and when called
to the colors in time of war, they regard active service as something to be
much desired and it is entered upon with enthusiasm rather than regret.
The same conditions would hold good if a National Homecroft Reserve Cavalry
Service were established in Nevada. The farmer could leave his home without
prejudice to his family and would welcome with patriotic enthusiasm a call
to the colors. At the same time his home life and home environment would be
free from all the monotony and innumerable evils of life in a military
barracks or camp in time of peace. It would have all the variety of an
active, out-of-door, free, and independent rural life in one of the most
bracing and stimulating climates in the world, and in a State which, if it
were fully developed under this plan, would have a population of at least
five million citizens and their families, of the highest and most
intelligent class that could be produced on American soil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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