In every State the works should be built, in coöperation with the States, municipalities, and local districts, that are necessary to extend to the people of every valley, from Maine to California, from Washington to Florida, and from Montana to Texas, complete assurance of protection from the flood menace in all years. The floods which have in the past brought such appalling catastrophes upon whole valleys and communities, at a cost of millions if not billions of dollars, should be harnessed and controlled and turned from demons of destruction into food-producers and commerce-carriers. If Japan should land an army on the Pacific Coast would we leave it to future generations to defend us against that invasion? It is equally monstrous and wrong for this generation to leave to future generations the building of the great works of defense necessary to check the invasion of our valleys by disastrous floods, or the destruction of our forests by the ravages of fire. Whenever a forest fire breaks out anywhere, there should be an adequate force of men enlisted in Uncle Sam's service for that purpose, to promptly extinguish it. It is as wrong to leave such work wholly to local initiative or action as it would be wrong to leave to the States the question of national defense from possible attack by other nations. Coöperation with the States there should always be, and this the States will willingly extend. Of that we need have no fear. But the initiative must be taken, and the basic plans made and furnished, by the national government. Otherwise the work will never be done that is necessary to defend the nation against Nature's invasions--against forest fires and floods, against drouth and overflow, against denudation and erosion, and against the slow but inexorable encroachments of the Desert in the arid region. The States will not and cannot do it. It requires the overshadowing authority, initiative and financial resources of the national government. The Office of Public Roads of the national government should be made a Service for _Construction_, like the Forest Service and the Reclamation Service. Whatever the national government does to aid in the construction of highways it should do by building them itself, whether they be built as models, to stimulate local interest, or as object lessons to the States through which they run, or as great national highways of travel, linking the Atlantic to the Pacific and the Great Lakes to the Gulf in a continuous system of roads as magnificent as those of ancient Rome. In time of war they would be military highways. In time of peace they would be national highways that would be traveled by multitudes of our people.