Arizona sentinel Yuma southwest., 1915-12-16

Tn his forthcoming annual report, Secretary Lane says:
 No one can survey the phy- sical condition of the United States without being impress ed and almost overwhelmed with the magnitude of the big work that must be done in keeping our rivers within the bounds and putting them to use. It is the largest task that the government must undertake sooner or later, and the sooner in my judg- ment the better.
 This matter came immedi- ately and most practically to my attention on a trip made in the late spring to the low CT valley of the Colorado river. On the Arizona side of this river the government IS retaining the desert. The Iowland will grow almost any thing, from dates to alfalfa.
 Its most helpful friend, ano .ts unrelenting enemy, too, is the river itself, for without the river it would return to cactus and sage. Yet the river is so jealous of her free 1om that she yearly attempts with violence, and by insidi ous methods as we'll, to re- claim for herself each foot O. land that has by stealth beer taken from her.
 On the opposite side of the river he California side, the river is held II by mountains until it has reached the Mexican line. There, by ca 1ricious turn, it deserts it's old-accus omed channel and flows westward nto what was once lake, but is now title more than a morass, and so slow " finds it's way to the Gulf of Califor- nia
 Immediately north of this westward bend in the river is the Imperial val ley, which has lately been used by several novelists to illustrate the hero ic struggle of man with nature. For this valley was once sea itself, and has indeed left a sort of rudimentary sea in a lake known as the Salton
 
 hundreds of feet deep, is the sile of the Colorado, the deposited wash ot a thousand miles of mountain channel
 Each June, when the snows of the Rockies melt, the Colorado. resenting the limitations which man has set up for it, presses with two strong shoulders against both sides of its prescribed banks, like Porthos under the slow caving of the earth. And as long as that flood comes the people on both sides must watch and work as the Hollanders have done.
 There are two distinct and ag5res- sive schools of thought on this mater of keeping the Colorado in it's place One is for sending the river willy, lilly down the old channel. The othef is for letting the river live it's own life, but keeping it off our preserves. One may be termed the absolutist theory md the other the democratic theory Congress has thus far committed itsel to the latter And this year, when danger threatened, Congress joined ir raising a fund to keep the river from sorcing it's way north into the Imperial Valley, and this work was successfully executed under this department by the former Chief of Engineers of the U. s. Army, General w. l.. Marshall No one, however, believes that the work is at an end or that we have doae more than put good patch upon it.
 Now, far above this point of danger there are thousands of square miles of land that need but the water of the Colorado river to make them as fruit full as the lands of the San Joaquin or the Salt River valley We need to catch that water when it is young, soon after it has been born from the snows There, in mountain valleys, it should be kept for a time and, as need ed, led into the peaceful paths of use fitness. And on that problem the