Bisbee daily review., 1918-06-27
Coming EUents


 it has been said, but sometimes it Is a very small shadow For instance, a cyclone often develops from cloud the size of a mans hand. And a pleasant day often comes with no other herald than hazy dawn to spread gladness throughout the land. It Is to be doubted, therefore, if Arizonans generally have fully gauged the importance and the possibilities that lie be- hind the simple announcement recently of Franklin K Lane, secretary of the interior, in his Los Angeles speech that he favored the appropriation of a million dollars to be used by the department in making surveys of arid lands in the west with a view to their reclamation.
 Already this recommendation has borne fruit in a resolution introduced in the sem ate to carry out this very plan.
 Ordinary this is the worst time in the world to get through any resolution apprc- priating money for any purpose whatever except for the war. But this resolution has to do with the war in an indirect manner. It plans ahead to employ returned soldiers in a manner that will be most valuable to their country and of most benefit to them. Consider for a moment the far reaching effects and vast potentialities of this reso- lution, if 1t should pass, and there are con- fident predictions that, with the powerful influence of Secretary Lane behind it, that 1t will pass. There are millions of acres of fertile land in Arizona and New Mexico and Western Texas that is useless now, making no returns in food at all, because of aridity. " .a L J of isolated cases, most of them upon small scale, except the Salt River valley revela- ton, that this arid desert land can be made as productive as any land in the wide world under the magic of the irrigation ditch.
 Once this reclamation movement Is started, and no man can look ahead with an eagles eye and an enthusiasts soul and see the end When three or four million sol diers and a million combatants from behind the lines come back from France there will be great problems for this country to solve. And they will have to be solved at once. Practically all the cultivated lands in this country have been taken long ago, and the cheapest and widest and poorest and most unproductive lands in most states of the union have steadily increased in value for twenty years. But down here in this sec ton of the southwest millions of acres of rich and fertile lands lie under the radiance of a semi-tropic sun waiting to be made the most productive land in America
 If a man doubt 1t let him ride across the desert and through the mesquite down to the Warren ranch three or four miles be- low Bisbee. A tract there Is irrigated by mine water, and today it waves its green and purple banners of alfalfa in the midst of the red desert as gayly and as brave as ever the foreign legion waved its flags and set its bayonets at Belloy en Santerre. A finer crop of alfalfa never waved on any $200-an-acre land in Kansas than that which grows down in the desert below Bisbee
 People scoffed and doubted and paid but little attention when the Roosevelt dam project was first discussed. It was vague and visionary then in the public eye, even here in Arizona. But it Is not vague today to any pilgrim who journeys through that wondrous valley of leaf and bloom. And there are dollars there by the hundreds of thousands, as well as beauty
 Franklin Lanes project to reclaim arid lands of the southwest and at the same time solve the problem of soldiers returned from France may we'll result in new em- pire of the desert over which cotton and alfalfa and gardens may reign where copper reigns alone today. And richer, greater. larger state than any man can conceive of now may well erect in Phoenix statue of this same Lane that will outlast and out shine any monument ever erected to any conqueror on the field of battle.