d constitute a tremendous insurance
against any aggression from without, and would also give a tremendous
sense of security for half a dozen years at least. This number could
then be reduced, for by that time several million young men from
eighteen years up would be partially trained and in first-class physical
shape to be summoned to service should the emergency arise.

In addition to the vast amount of good roads building, whose cost could
be borne in equal proportions by nation, state and county--a most
important factor in connection with military necessity as well as a
great economic factor in the successful development and advancement of
any community--the millions of acres of now arid lands in the West,
awaiting only water to make them among the most valuable and productive
in all the world, could be used as a great solution of our immigration
problem.

Up to the year when the war began, there came to our shores upwards of
one million immigrants every twelve months, seeking work, and most of
them homes in this country. The great bulk of them got no farther than
our cities, increasing congestion, already in many cases acute, and many
of them becoming in time, from one cause or another, dependents, the
annual cost of their maintenance aggregating many millions every year.

With these vast acres ready for them large numbers could, under a wise
system of distribution, be sent on to the great West and Southwest, and
more easily and directly now since the Panama Canal is open for
navigation. Allotments of these lands could be assigned them that they
could in time become owners of, through a wisely established system of
payments. Many of them would thereby be living lives similar to those
they lived in their own countries, and for which their training and
experience there have abundantly fitted them. They would thus become a
far more valuable type of citizens--landowners--than they could ever
possibly become otherwise, and especially through our present
unorganised hit-or-miss system. They would in time also add annually
hundreds of millions of productive work to the wealth of the country.

The very wise system that was inaugurated some time ago in connection
with the Coast Defence arm of our army is, under the wise direction of
our present Secretary of War, to be extended to all branches of the
service. For some time in the Coast Artillery Service the enlisted man
under competent instruction has had the privilege of