Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace Part 21

That amounts to a billion dollars in ten years. It is five billion dollars in fifty years. And we may be certain that five billion dollars will be spent, and probably much more, in the next fifty years on a standing army.

When that has been spent it is absolutely gone, just as much as though it had been invested in fire crackers and they had all been set off and there was nothing left, not even noise.

It is not contended that this country should spend _less_ than $100,000,000 a year on its army, _but it is contended that it should not spend more_.

And for what it does spend it should get larger results. $100,000,000 a year ought to be enough to maintain an army enlisted to the full strength of 100,000 men to which the army is now limited by Act of Congress. In addition it should support the necessary organization and training schools to furnish all the officers required for the National Construction Reserve and for the National Homecroft Reserve. The officers of the Homecroft Reserve should be permanently located as residents of the community where their regiment is established.

The officers for the National Construction Reserve should be attached to the Regular Army except when detailed for the work of training those reserves during the period set apart for that work each year. At least one-half of the rank and file of a regular force of 100,000 men in the Standing Army should be composed of men trained for service as officers in the National Construction Reserve, and available for instant transformation into such officers. The training of those officers should be one of the most important functions of the Regular Army. The Army should forthwith take up that work and cease any further connection with the civil work of internal improvements.

_If the Standing Army of the United States were increased to an actually enlisted strength of 200,000 men as is now being urged, it would mean the addition of another $100,000,000 a year to the military burdens of the people of the United States, and we would still be without any adequate national defense in case of war with a first-cla.s.s power._

Now compare the plan for a Homecroft Reserve and its results, from the financial point of view, with this proposition to increase the Regular Army to a total strength of 200,000 men.

The annual cost of an increase of 100,000 men in the Regular Army would be $100,000,000 a year; or $5,000,000,000 in fifty years. Every dollar of that huge sum would be drawn from the people by taxation. When spent it would be gone, leaving nothing to show for its expenditure. The economic value of the labor of 100,000 men would be wasted. That would be another $5,000,000,000 in fifty years, estimating the potential labor value of each man at $1000 a year. That makes the stupendous total economic loss and waste of money and human labor of ten billion dollars in fifty years,--an amount ten times as large as the whole national debt of the United States,--an amount as large as the combined national debts of Great Britain and France, which an eminent authority has said are so large that they never can be paid.

_Measure up against that proposition the Homecroft Reserve plan and compare results:_

Every $1000 of capital invested in the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve will reclaim and fully equip an acre Homecroft with a Reservist and his family on it. There is no reason why the capital necessary for that should be provided from current revenues. In fact it should not be so provided, because it would be invested in property to be perpetually owned by the national government, from which future generations will derive an enormous annual revenue.

A fixed average valuation of one thousand dollars for each Homecroft would be more than enough to cover the cost of reclamation, preparation for occupancy, building roads, houses, and outbuildings, water systems, sanitation, inst.i.tutes for instruction, schools, libraries,--in fact everything needed to be done to make each Homecroft ready for occupancy as a productive acre garden home, with a complete community organization. It would also cover the cost of the original military equipment of the Reservist who would occupy the Homecroft.

Each Reservist would pay for the use of the Homecroft and for educational instruction for himself and family, a net annual rental of $120, being twelve per cent on the fixed capitalized value of $1000 placed on each Homecroft. Of that rental of twelve per cent, four per cent would be apportioned to interest, and two per cent to create a sinking fund that would cover the entire princ.i.p.al in fifty years. The remaining six per cent would cover expenses of operation and maintenance, instruction, and all other expenses connected with the Homecroft Reserve Establishment, including military expenditures. The government would be under no expense whatsoever for the maintenance of this Homecroft Reserve Establishment that would have to be borne out of the general revenues, not even for field maneuvers. There would be no expenses of railway transportation to those maneuvers. Every regiment would march to and from its annual encampment.

One hundred and twenty dollars a year would be the revenue to the government from one Homecroft. After that it becomes merely a question of multiplying units. The revenue from 5,000,000 Homecrofts would be $600,000,000 a year. As fast as the capital was needed for investment in the creation and establishment of Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements, it could be easily secured by the government. A plan that would insure this would be the adoption of a financial system to cover this branch of the operations of the Government which would be modeled after the French Rentes System. Instead of Government Bonds, as they are now called, Government Homecroft Certificates would be issued, bearing four per cent interest, in denominations of twenty-five dollars. The interest on each certificate would be one dollar a year. If such certificates were available, the purse strings of the people would be opened to take them as readily as those of the French people were opened to take the securities issued by the French Government to pay the war debt of a billion dollars to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War.

$500,000,000 a year of these certificates could be issued every year for ten years. That would complete the work of creating the entire Homecroft Reserve Establishment and provide the capital of $5,000,000,000 necessary for investment therein.

Starting from that point, in fifty years thereafter the entire investment of $5,000,000,000 would have been repaid with all current interest, and the government would own the 5,000,000 Homecrofts free and clear of all indebtedness or financial obligations relating thereto.

Now put the two propositions side by side and look at them.

An increase of 100,000 men in the Standing Army would mean in fifty years:

1. An expense of $5,000,000,000 for maintenance.

2. An economic waste of another $5,000,000,000, being the potential labor value of the 100,000 men who would be withdrawn from industry.

The Homecroft Reserve Establishment would provide a military force of 5,000,000 men instead of 100,000.

It would provide for the maintenance of this immense force during the fifty years without any ultimate cost to the government.

It would create and vest in the government in perpetual ownership property consisting of 5,000,000 acre Homecrofts worth $1000 apiece,--a total property value of $5,000,000,000 which would be acquired by the Government, and fully paid for from the Rental Revenues from the property during the fifty year period.

It would thereafter provide from those Rental Revenues an annual income to the government of six per cent on $5,000,000,000 amounting to $300,000,000 a year.

The potential labor value of the 100,000 men in each Homecroft Reserve Corps would be saved and transformed into an actual productive value of the $1000 which each would annually produce from his Homecroft. The productive labor value of each Corps of 100,000 Homecroft Reservists therefore would amount to $5,000,000 in fifty years. That is the same amount that would represent the economic waste during that same period, of the potential labor value of the additional force of 100,000 men which it is now proposed shall be added to the regular army.

The economic value of the productive labor of the entire Homecroft Reserve of 5,000,000 men in the fifty years would be fifty times $5,000,000,000.

And in order to save the enormous expense and waste that would result from increasing the standing army, and, in addition, to achieve the stupendous benefits that would result from the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve, it is only necessary that the same common sense business methods and principles should be applied to the operations of the government that any large corporation would adopt if it had the financial resources, of the United States.

_Why should anyone be staggered at the proposition for the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve, or balk at it because it is big?_

When the national government owns 29,600,000 acres of national forests in the drainage basin of the Colorado River, is there any reason why it cannot reclaim and settle in one-acre garden homes, the comparatively small area of 1,000,000 acres which is only a part of what it owns in the main valley of the Colorado River between Needles and Yuma?

If it can do that in the Colorado River Country is there any reason why it should not take a million acres of land in northern Minnesota, which it now owns, and reclaim it and settle it in one-acre garden homes? The government now owns, in addition to that land, 987,000 acres of national forest in Minnesota.

If the government can acquire by purchase, as is now being done, another million acres of forest lands in the Appalachian Mountains under the Appalachian National Forest Act, is there any reason why it should not acquire a million acres of land in West Virginia and irrigate it and subdivide it into one-acre garden homes, and put Homecrofters on it to intensively cultivate the land?

If it can do that in West Virginia, is there any reason why it should not be done in Louisiana or in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley in California?

In the case of the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements the government will see to it, itself, that its work does in fact result in actual home making, whereas speculators get the ultimate benefit of much of the other work that it does.

If the government can maintain a Department of Agriculture at an expense of $20,000,000 in one year, for the instruction of farmers in _agriculture_, who get the benefit of that service without paying for it, is there any reason why it should not maintain educational inst.i.tutions to train Homecroft Reservists in _Acreculture_, if they pay for the cost of that instruction and all the expenses of maintaining the necessary educational inst.i.tutions?

If the government can enlist men in the regular army for national defense and put them in camps and barracks in time of peace to waste their time in idleness, is there any reason why it should not enlist men in a Reserve and put them in Homecrofts, where their labor will be utilized in production, and the elevating influence of family and community life be subst.i.tuted for the demoralizing influences of the life of the camp or barracks?

There is no more reason why the government should not build and perpetually own the Homecrofts used for this national purpose of education and defense than there is that it should not own the Military Academy at West Point or the Naval Academy at Annapolis, or any land used by the Agricultural Department for any of its work, which is educational, or by the War Department, which is for national defense. The Homecrofts used to train and maintain in the service the Homecroft Reserves would be used for a combination of both purposes, and their cost would be just as properly cla.s.sified as an expenditure for national defense as the cost of any existing camp, barracks, or army post now owned by the government.

The burden of the Standing Army of less than 100,000 men now maintained by the United States could be very considerably reduced by establishing as large a portion of it as possible in the Homecroft System, were it not for the false ideals as to human values that are apparently so deeply imbedded in the minds of the military caste.

_The entire Homecroft Reserve System should be organized as a separate department of the National government like the Forest Service or Reclamation Service, and should be known as the Homecroft Service._

The Homecroft Reserve in Minnesota should be known as the Department of the Reserves of the North; the Reserve in Louisiana as the Department of the Reserves of the South; the Reserve in West Virginia as the Department of the Reserves of the East; the Reserve in the Colorado Valley and Nevada as the Department of the Reserves of the West; and the Reserve in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys in California as the Department of the Reserves of the Pacific.

The Louisiana Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and sailors; the West Virginia and Minnesota Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and Foresters; the Colorado River and California Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and Irrigators--Conquerors of the Desert; the Nevada Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and Cavalrymen,--the Cossack Cavalry of America,--and all would be good soldiers, as well as the very highest type of good citizens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map showing Territorial Divisions and Locations of the Departments of the National Homecroft Reserves. Also showing the Corrected Mexican Boundary Line and Neutral Zone between the United States and Mexico, and the New State of South California.]

During the entire two months devoted to the regular annual march, encampment, and field maneuvers, the members of the Homecroft Reserve would be under the military control and direction of the War Department, exactly as they would be in times of actual warfare. During the remaining ten months they would be under the civil jurisdiction of the Homecroft Service.

One of the insuperable obstacles in the way of efficient national defense by State Militia is the impossibility of rapid mobilization, and the practical certainty that in case of actual war none of the States on the coast of the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico would permit their State Militia to be diverted from the protection of their own State. This would leave the great seaboard cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, or cities located near the Atlantic Coast like Baltimore and Washington, without an adequate force for their protection in case of war.

One of the chief reasons for concentrating a million of the Homecroft Reserves in one State would be to facilitate the establishment of a perfect military organization on a large scale as is required by modern warfare; and to avoid delay in mobilization and expense for transportation to annual encampments and field maneuvers. The Homecroft Reserve plan contemplates that there shall be no expenditure for railroad transportation except in the event of actual warfare. The Reserves in California and in the Colorado River Valley would be marched with their full equipment to one great concentration camp in Nevada for their annual encampment and for field maneuvers. The whole military organization, officers, auxiliaries, and military machinery, for an army of two million men would thus be given actual training every year in the complicated work of handling a great army in the field. That would not be possible if they were scattered over the United States from Dan to Beersheba, in little bunches of a company here and another there.

Annual encampments for field maneuvers for the other sections of the reserve should be established at least 400 miles distant from their regular permanent Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements.

The Roman soldiers were trained to march twenty miles in six hours and carry their heavy equipment. The Emperor Septimius Severus marched at the head of his army on foot and in complete armor for eight hundred miles from the Danube to Rome in forty days--twenty miles a day. Such a march, once every year, should be a part of the training of every soldier in the Homecroft Reserve.

There would be no difficulty in finding places in Texas adapted for the field maneuvers of the 1,000,000 men comprising the Homecroft Reserve in Louisiana, and the annual encampment of those in Minnesota could be located in Montana.

In West Virginia the country is mountainous and smaller units of organization would be more easily adapted to that State, as in Switzerland.

In West Virginia the government would not acquire its entire million acres in one body. It would be scattered into many different sections of the State, in practically every valley, but more particularly in the rolling country lying between the mountains and the Ohio River, which stretches all the way from Wheeling to Huntington in West Virginia. If it were desirable to concentrate the entire million men in one annual concentration camp, the best location for it would be in the northern part of the peninsula of Michigan.

There are many reasons why West Virginia should be chosen for the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve for the eastern section of the United States. Its chief advantage is its central location, almost equi-distant between Maine and Florida and within marching distance from any point on the Atlantic seaboard, the Mississippi River, or the Great Lakes.

Switzerland could be reproduced in West Virginia, with the climatic and physical conditions of the two countries so much alike. The Swiss Military System could be applied to the entire State. With a million regularly enlisted Homecroft Reservists at all times ready for service, there would then be in addition a large unorganized reserve composed of graduates from the Homecroft Reserves or who had received a military training in the public schools. It would be entirely practicable to engraft the entire Swiss system of universal military training in the public schools on the school system of the State of West Virginia.

Switzerland has a total area of 15,975 square miles with a population of 3,741,971. West Virginia has an area of 24,170 square miles and a population of 1,221,119. The addition of 1,000,000 Homecroft Reservists to its population with their families, would bring the total population up to nearly twice that of Switzerland. The marvelous adaptability of West Virginia to the Homecroft idea and its possibilities as a fruit and vegetable and poultry producing country were fully set forth in an article in the "National Magazine" for December, 1913, which has been reprinted under its t.i.tle, "West Virginia, the Land Overlooked," in a pamphlet issued by the Department of Agriculture of the State of West Virginia.

The following pertinent statements are made in that article: "Fifty years of amazing progress in West Virginia gives a new significance to her motto, 'Montani semper liberi,' meaning 'Mountaineers always freemen.'