The same identical influences and traits of human character that drove the Homecrofters from Scotland will be responsible for our failure to take warning from England's lesson, if we do so fail. It is the disposition of intrenched interests to grasp for more and more, and constantly more, that has imperiled England's national life. The same grasping policy of the intrenched interests in the United States now imperils the national life of this nation in the future by the absorption of our national resources and what remains of our public domain into private speculative ownership while the toiling millions are crowded into the tenements. We could survive the loss of what the intrenched interests have already taken if they would only let loose on what is left and let Uncle Sam have a free hand to do with his own as is best for all his people in places like the Colorado River country. There the greater part of the land needed is still public land, and speculators have not as yet acquired the water rights and power possibilities. England could not and the United States cannot maintain a great standing army, but England could have established and maintained a Homecroft Reserve of a million men in Scotland, and we can do it in the Colorado River Valley, and other places where it ought to be done in the United States, provided the land and water power can be saved from the clutch of the speculators before they have so complicated the proposition as to interminably delay it while Uncle Sam is getting back from them what ought never to have been granted away. England had the Scotch Homecrofters, and drove them from the homes of their forefathers to make great estates. We have got to organize our Homecroft Reservists and locate them, and train them, but that can be done. There are thousands of the descendants of the Scotch Homecrofters serving England to-day in the Canadian Contingent Corps in Europe, and doubtless more than one of the crew of the Australian Cruiser that sunk the Emden could trace his pedigree back to a Galloway Drover, a Solway Smuggler, or a Border Raider. From the shielings of the Scotch Homecrofters there went out into the world a race that has made good, wherever it has gone. Would it not be well to think of that in the United States to-day and breed some more of the same sturdy Homecroft Stock in this country, for patriotic service either in peace or war?