Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace Part 12

They are an Island people and the smell of the sea is in their nostrils.

They already control the commerce of the Pacific and their ambition is to increase that commerce by every means in their power.

The colonies they will found in the future, the countries that the swarming millions from j.a.pan will covet and occupy will border the Pacific Ocean, where the ships that fly the j.a.panese flag will come and go as the couriers of a great commerce binding the colonies of j.a.pan to the mother country.

Where then will they go?

_To South America?_

Yes, to its northern sh.o.r.es bordering the Pacific, to Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, more particularly to Peru. In a very few years, as history runs, there will be an immense j.a.panese population on these Northern Pacific sh.o.r.es of South America. It is not at all unlikely that in less than a century there will be a larger population in South America of the j.a.panese race than now exists in all of j.a.pan. It will be recruited not only from the surplus population of the mother country, but from a rapid reproduction of the j.a.panese among the transplanted population. There will be no race suicide among the j.a.panese. They will stick to the land in these new countries and breed a race as st.u.r.dy as its progenitors. They will never adopt the Anglo-Saxon system of City Congestion and consequent Racial Extinction.

_Will they go to Mexico?_

Yes, they will go to Mexico, and the Pacific Coast region of Mexico will be another breeding ground for this hardy and virile race, where likewise they will be tillers of the soil and a people hardened and strengthened by constant contact with Mother Earth.

More than that, the Mexicans will speedily be taught, if they require the lesson, that if they harm a hair in the head of a j.a.panese, punishment and retribution will be sure, swift, and severe. They will live at peace with the j.a.panese for that reason. It is the only way to have peace in Mexico, and j.a.pan is strong enough to enforce peace and the security of the lives and property of all her people that way.

And because they will do that, they will eventually control and dominate Mexico, in a good deal the same way that England dominates India. Whenever they do that, they will protect not only their own people and their property, but that of all other peoples as well, and everybody will be as safe in Mexico as in j.a.pan. But the waters that now run to waste in the Pacific Ocean, on the west coast of Mexico, will be harnessed to irrigate the orchards and gardens of the j.a.panese and an Asiatic and not a Caucasian race will possess Mexico.

"_Why?_" some one asks.

For the very simple reason that the j.a.panese will occupy Mexico because they want to reclaim and cultivate its waste lands, and not speculate in them or exploit somebody else who will cultivate them.

Already the j.a.panese are as laborers cultivating large areas owned by American Capitalists in the delta of the Colorado River. That will not last. The j.a.panese will before very long organize a.s.sociations among themselves and acquire and own the land or some other land which they can own and cultivate for themselves. There is no alien land law in Mexico that will prevent that and there will be none. The j.a.panese will see to that.

Neither will there ever be any long continued peace or security for life or property in Mexico until either j.a.pan or the United States enforces it. If we do not, they will. _That is as certain as fate._

And when they undertake the task, dragged into it by some outrage on their own people, shall we stay their hand, and say to them that the Monroe Doctrine applies to Asiatic as well as to European nations?

It is only a matter of time when we will have to face that question with j.a.pan. j.a.pan will no more permit the Mexicans to commit outrages on the j.a.panese than she will permit us to do it. Some idea of the conflicts that race hatred may breed in Mexico will be gained by reading the quotation that follows from "In Mexico the Land of Unrest," by Henry Baerlin.

In the preface of that book we find this description of a "gentle and joyous pa.s.sage at arms" of the Mexicans with the Chinese.

"I fancy that a number of the miscreants who, owing to a mere misunderstanding, ma.s.sacred three hundred Chinamen in Torreon not long since--some were cut into small pieces, some beheaded, some were tied to horses by their queues and dragged along the streets, while others had their arms or legs attached to different horses and were torn asunder, some were stood up naked in the market gardens of the neighborhood and given over as so many targets to the drunken marksmen, thirteen Chinese employees of Yu Hop's General Store were haled into the street and killed with knives, two hundred Chinamen were sheltered in the city gaol, but all their money was appropriated and such articles of clothing as the warders fancied. One brave girl had nine of them concealed, and calmly she denied their presence even when her father had gone out to argue with the mob and had been shot for being on the Chinese side--a number of these miscreants, I fancy, are on other days delightful citizens."[1]

[Footnote 1: "The Mexicans are descended, on the one side," says Mr.

Cunningham Graham, "from the most bloodthirsty race of Indians that the Spanish Conquerors came across, and on the other side from the very fiercest elements of the Spanish race itself--elements which had just emerged from eight hundred years of warfare with the Moors."]

Think you that the j.a.panese would submit to that without war? The account of this racial outrage may be overdrawn, but judging from what happened in our own country when the Chinese were being persecuted prior to the Exclusion Act, there is nothing inherently improbable in this account. It is no worse than the Turkish outrages that have often been committed on Christians in Asia Minor or in Europe.

China has submitted to all such outrages because for centuries she has been a nation of peace, but the time is not far distant when she will do so no longer.

With the United States, a nation with a government, in case of race conflict, leading to insult or injury to j.a.panese, we could make amends, or fight, as we chose, and we would probably make amends.

In Mexico, likely at any time to be without a government, as she is now, a conflict with j.a.pan would be very apt to result like the recent differences between the Turks and the English in Egypt. The Land of the Montezumas would become a Protectorate of the Land of Nippon and a part of its Empire Power.

The j.a.panese problem would then be transferred from across the Pacific to across the Rio Grande, and j.a.panese cotton mills at Guaymas would get their cotton from the cotton fields of the Colorado River Valley. They would transport it by water down the Colorado River and across the Gulf of California and develop a great ocean commerce from the territory that is tributary to the Gulf of California. That includes the whole valley of the Colorado River if its transportation facilities were adequately and comprehensively developed, as the j.a.panese would develop it, by lines of j.a.panese steamers running up the Colorado River at least as far as Yuma.

The American Railroads could not strangle j.a.panese compet.i.tion.

CHAPTER VII

_The potential economic strength and creative power of the people of j.a.pan may be ill.u.s.trated by what they would do with the Colorado River Valley and watershed if it were to become j.a.panese territory, and what we must do with it if we are to hold our ground against their economic compet.i.tion in the eternal racial struggle for the survival of the fittest._

The Colorado River has been aptly called the Nile of America. There is a most remarkable resemblance. In the valley of this American Nile another Egypt could be created. All the fertility, wealth, population, products, art, and romance of the Land of the Pharaohs could be reproduced in the valley of this great American river. A city as large as Alexandria at Yuma, and another as large as Cairo at Parker, are quite within reasonable expectations whenever the resources of the Colorado River country are comprehensively developed.

But even that comparison of possibilities gives no adequate conception of what might be accomplished by the j.a.panese in the way of creative development in the drainage basin of the Colorado River.

Another j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese would do with it if they had the country to develop according to j.a.panese economic ideals and their methods of soil cultivation and production. They know full well the possibilities of the Colorado River country. Already the j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese, 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.

They would find that the total run-off from the Colorado River watershed that now runs to waste is enough to irrigate 5,000,000 acres of land located in the main valley of the river between the mouth of the Colorado Canyon and the Mexican boundary line. They would find that the area of land so located that can be irrigated by gravity ca.n.a.ls is 2,000,000 acres; that 1,500,000 more acres can be irrigated by pumping with electric power generated in the river, and, from the best information now obtainable, that the area irrigated by pumping can eventually be enlarged another 1,500,000 acres, making a total in all of 5,000,000 irrigable acres in the main Colorado River Valley, including the Imperial Valley and the valley above Yuma. Including the entire watershed or drainage basin of the Colorado River, and all lands irrigable from underground supplies, and enlarging the irrigable area to the fullest extent that it would ultimately be enlarged by return seepage, they would find that they could eventually irrigate more than 12,500,000 acres, which is as much land as is now irrigated and cultivated in j.a.pan.

They would figure on _acreculture_ rather than _agriculture_, and would investigate to the minutest detail the problem of fertilization. They would figure on handling the silt of the Colorado River just as the silt of the Nile is handled in Egypt, fertilizing as large an area as possible with it.

The Colorado River carries silt that is very fine and enough of it could be brought in the water every year to practically every irrigated field, to maintain the incredible fertility and productiveness of the bottom lands and increase that of the mesa lands.

They would look for phosphate, potash, and nitrogen for fertilizers. They would find that an inexhaustible supply of potash could be manufactured from the giant kelp beds of the Pacific Coast. They would learn that there are in the territory included in the drainage basin of the Colorado River unlimited deposits of phosphate rock from which all needed phosphate could be mined. Nitrogen, they would ascertain, could be produced from the air in immense quant.i.ties by the use of the electric power which could be developed without limit in the canyon of the Colorado River.

They would utilize for that purpose all the vast surplus of electric power from the Colorado River as it whirls and plunges down the most stupendous river gorge in the world. In addition to producing all they needed to fertilize their own lands they would produce enough nitrogen, potash and phosphates to supply the markets of the world.

The land, the water, and the fertilizer being thus a.s.sured, they would find the climate such that even the intensive methods of gardening now customary in j.a.pan, would give no idea of the possibilities of acreage production in the Colorado River Valley. In that valley acreculture would be hothouse culture out-of-doors. The hot climate of the country would be found, when this economic survey of it was made, to be its greatest a.s.set.

They would find that every product of the tropical and semi-tropical countries of the world could be here produced to perfection. They would find that by actual experience extending over many years, an acre of land in such a climate, closely cultivated and abundantly fertilized, and cropped several times a year, would produce from $1000 to $2000 net profit annually and even more, depending on the skill of the cultivator.

They would find that the skilled soil-cultivators of j.a.pan could by this system of hothouse culture out-of-doors, provide all the food for an average family for a year, and produce over and above that an average of $1000 net profit per acre every year. This would include every product now successfully grown in Southern California.

They would find that the Colorado River could be ca.n.a.lized from Yuma to the Needles, and the Gila and Salt Rivers ca.n.a.lized from Yuma to Phoenix and Florence, and a ship ca.n.a.l built from Yuma to the Gulf of California. Then the products from this wonderfully prolific country could be shipped from Yuma to every seaport of the world. Through the Panama Ca.n.a.l they could reach every seaport on the Atlantic Coast. By trans-shipment at New Orleans to ca.n.a.l or river steamers or barges they would connect with a river system 20,000 miles in extent for the distribution of their products to inland territory.

They would calculate the cost of reclamation and the value of the reclaimed land, measured by its productive power. They would figure that they could afford to spend on the reclamation of the land at least an amount equal to the value of one year's production from the land. That would be $1000 per acre. Figuring only on the 5,000,000 acres that could be reclaimed in the main lower valley of the Colorado River below the canyon, they would find that it would justify a total expenditure of five billion dollars.

Some enterprising American Congressional Economist would then tell them that they surely could not contemplate spending that much _on anything but a war_. They would tell him that they were _going into a war with the Desert_ and they proposed to triumph in it, just as they triumphed in the war with Russia. There would be this difference: all they spent on the Russian War was gone past recovery. They had to spend it or cease to exist as a nation. In this war with the Desert they would spend five billion dollars, and for it they would create a country that would produce food worth five billion dollars a year every year through all future time.

Then the American Speculator would come on the scene with his acc.u.mulated wisdom gained through many failures of colonization schemes because there were no colonists or not enough to keep up with the interest on the bonds issued. The American Speculator would warn the j.a.panese against such a gigantic blunder as they were about to make in undertaking such a stupendous colonization scheme.

And the j.a.panese Statesmen and Financiers would point out to him not only that they had all the colonists they needed right at home in j.a.pan, but that instead of its being necessary to spend a large sum of money to induce those colonists to emigrate to the new lands, they were having much trouble now to keep the colonists from going to the Pacific Coast where they are not wanted. They would explain that they are overcrowded in j.a.pan; that their surplus population must go somewhere; that they are the most skilled gardeners and orchardists in the world; that the same men who would build the irrigation works, and the power plants, would settle right down on the reclaimed lands, glad to get an acre apiece, and live on it and cultivate it with their families.

So the j.a.panese in this thorough way would go at this great work of wresting a new j.a.panese Empire from the Desert. They would not do any construction work until they had made a complete comprehensive plan of every detail of this new empire they were starting to build. Then they would go to the Colorado Canyon and begin by building a great diversion dam as far down the canyon as might be practicable to lift the water high enough to carry it in high line ca.n.a.l systems along both sides of the valley, and to bring it out on the mesa lands and use it where the land most needs the silt for a fertilizer. They would figure on first reclaiming all the mesa land on which the water could in this way be used, and then they would build pumping plants with which to irrigate the more elevated lands.

They would reclaim the mesa land first because every acre of mesa land that was reclaimed would serve as a sponge to soak up the flood water. By carrying out that plan they would eventually relieve the lowlands in the floor of the valley from all danger of overflow. They would not have to spend anything to control the floods of the Colorado River. There would be no floods. The j.a.panese would begin at the right end of the problem, and build big enough at the start to solve it as a whole, comprehensively.

Their plan would be to use up every drop of the flood water by irrigating land with it. There would never at any time of the year be any water running to waste in the lower river. There would never be in the main river more than enough water to supply the ca.n.a.ls that irrigated the lowlands of the lower delta. The ship ca.n.a.l from Yuma to the Gulf, and the ca.n.a.ls from Yuma to the Needles, Phoenix, and Florence would be not irrigating ca.n.a.ls, but drainage ca.n.a.ls.

The j.a.panese would control and utilize all the water that now runs to waste in the Colorado River. They would save and use, not a part of it, but every drop of it. They would, as they have done in j.a.pan, preserve the sources of the water supplies from destruction by overgrazing, deforestation, and erosion. They would build the Charleston Reservoir, on the San Pedro. They would stop the floods that now devastate that valley and wash away and destroy its farm lands. They would build the Verde Reservoir, the Agua Fria Reservoir, the San Carlos Reservoir, and every other reservoir on every tributary of the Colorado required to control for use the immense volume of water that we now waste.