Land grants have been made to the Cossacks, in return for which they must give the military service which is the condition upon which the land grant was made. The total area of all these grants is in the neighborhood of 146,000,000 acres and many of the Cossack communities have been made wealthy from the timber and mines on their lands. These Cossack communities are self-governing political bodies within themselves, in all their local affairs. Their term of service begins with early manhood and ends only when they have reached the age of sixty. Their mode of life gives them all the physical vigor that could be attained by constant service, and when called to the colors in time of war, they regard active service as something to be much desired and it is entered upon with enthusiasm rather than regret.
The same conditions would hold good if a National Homecroft Reserve Cavalry Service were established in Nevada. The farmer could leave his home without prejudice to his family and would welcome with patriotic enthusiasm a call to the colors. At the same time his home life and home environment would be free from all the monotony and innumerable evils of life in a military barracks or camp in time of peace. It would have all the variety of an active, out-of-door, free, and independent rural life in one of the most bracing and stimulating climates in the world, and in a State which, if it were fully developed under this plan, would have a population of at least five million citizens and their families, of the highest and most intelligent class that could be produced on American soil.
This great Cavalry Service of our citizen soldiery in the State of Nevada could be so quickly transported to and mobilized at any point on the Pacific Coast between Seattle and Los Angeles, in the event of threatened invasion, that no nation could by any possibility land an army on our Pacific shores without being almost instantly confronted by an organized force of citizen soldiers with its full quota of cavalry--not an untrained mob of volunteers but hardened and trustworthy men of training and experience in all that a soldier can learn to do in preliminary training without actual warfare.