Our National Defense: The Patriotism of PeaceMaxwell, George Hebard
History
Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace
Maxwell, George Hebard
United States -- Defenses
That would leave them many millions of acres--of the higher, colder, and
less fertile lands on the watersheds of the tributary streams in Arizona,
Nevada, and Utah, for grazing and timber growing. The population sustained
by these industries, added to that which would be sustained by mining, and
electrical power, and the multitude of manufacturing industries which they
would establish, would bring the total population of the basin of the
Colorado River and its tributaries, under this Japanese development, up to
fifty million people. That is a population as large as that which now bears
on its shoulders all the burdens of the Japanese Empire, including its army
and navy.
The Japanese would pump from underground with electric power the last
possible drop of available water to promote surface production. The great
torrential downpours that come occasionally in that country would be
controlled by systems of embankments and soaked into the ground to
replenish the underground supplies instead of being allowed to run to
waste, carrying destruction in their path. They would from their dams in
the Colorado River Canyon develop power that would pump water high enough
to reach such vast areas of rich and fertile land as the Hualpi Valley--at
least enough to turn such lands into forest plantations where water enough
for agriculture could not be provided for the land.
Add to the wealth they would produce from their garden farms the wealth
they would dig from the mines, develop from the water power, and produce in
their factories, and they would create more annual wealth from this now
desolate and uninhabited region in the Colorado River Valley than is to-day
annually produced in the Japanese Empire. And more than that, they would be
producing a strong and virile people. Every man would be a soldier in time
of need and a Japanese army of more than five million men would be able to
take the field at a moment's warning, leaving the youths who were too young
and the men who were too old for military service, with the aid of the
women and children, to cultivate the acre garden homes.
Why is not all this done by the Caucasian race who now control this great
valley of the American Nile--the people whose flag flies over it?
Why, with all this incredible wealth lying undeveloped under our feet, do
we not seize the necessary tools and develop it ourselves?
Why indeed? The facts stated are facts, physical facts not to be denied.
Why do we leave this empire untouched?
_Because thus far our only system of development has been speculation and
human exploitation._
Because we seem to have known no way of settling a new country except to
permit a generation of speculators to skim the cream before the actual
tillers of the soil get a chance to cultivate it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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