Our National Defense: The Patriotism of PeaceMaxwell, George Hebard
History
Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace
Maxwell, George Hebard
United States -- Defenses
Another Japanese Empire could be made there, with all the vast productive
power, population, and national wealth of the present Land of Nippon. That
is what the Japanese would do with it if they had the country to develop
according to Japanese economic ideals and their methods of soil cultivation
and production. They know full well the possibilities of the Colorado River
country. Already the Japanese cultivators of the soil are at the Gateway to
this great valley, just below the international boundary line in Mexico.
They are now doing there the manual labor necessary to develop and produce
crops from Mexican lands owned by Americans in the lower delta of the
Colorado River.
The Japanese, if they had the opportunity, would give the same careful
study to every minute detail of conquesting the Colorado River Valley from
the Desert that they gave to defeating Russia in the war they fought to
save their national existence against the sea power and land power of the
Russian Empire.
They would measure the water that runs to waste, as we have done. They
would select and plat the land it should be used to irrigate, which we have
not done. They would survey every reservoir site in the Colorado Canyon and
test the foundations, which we have not done. They would calculate the
aggregate volume of electric power that could be generated by a series of
reservoirs in the Colorado Canyon, which we have not done.
They would estimate, as we have done, the total amount of sediment carried
by the river every year into the Gulf of California and wasted. They would
find that the Colorado River discharges during an average year into the
Gulf of California 338,000,000 tons of mud and silt as suspended matter,
and in addition to this 19,490,000 tons of gypsum, lime, sodium chloride
and other salts,--in all a total of 357,490,000 tons each year of
fertilizing material. It is enough to give to 3,574,900 acres an annual
fertilization of one hundred tons of this marvelously rich material that
would be annually carried by the water to the land if proper scientific
methods were adopted for the reclamation of the irrigable land located
between Needles and Yuma, which is over three and a half million acres. The
fertilization thus given to the land would be of value equal to that with
which the Nile has fertilized Egypt every year since before the dawn of
history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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