[Footnote: Seventeen thousand six hundred and five square
miles.] In 1913 the loss in a single year was one hundred and sixty
million dollars. [Footnote: One hundred and sixty-three million, U. S.
Weather Bureau estimate.] In the last thirty years it is estimated the
loss has been a half of a billion, and it would have been immensely
greater, of course, if the river had not been given unchallenged freedom
of great, unclaimed swamps. And yet the river has never at any one time
massed its great army of waters. At one time it has been the Ohio, at
another the Missouri, and then the Red that it has sent against the
fortifications. If all these streams were to be brought in flood at once
the lower valley would be swept clean.
So it is no martial simile that I am using. It is a real battle that is
continuously on. The gaunt sharp-shooter, pacing the embankment with
Winchester in hand to shoot any burrowing confederate of the river, a rat,
or mole, is a real and not an imaginary figure. And the battles that have
been fought along its course are as play by the side of those yet to be
waged before it is subdued by man.
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