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. 002581 . "The next oontention is that this transfer of title25 took plaoe somehow as a result of the Desert Land Aot. ! have alreac.y commented on the Desert Land Aot in respeot to the Callforr..ia DOl)tl'ine. But hO~l could the Desert Land Act haye acoompUshed this at all in those of the 17 Reclamation states to which the Desert Land Aot has never extended?26 "I would ask next how, under any of the foregoing arguments, the theol~- of State ownership, explicit in the Colorado Doctrine, can be reconciled with numerous Supreme Court decisions in this field? I agree that the question was not decided in Nebraska Va !,!yomillg.2'1 or in the Ivanhoe cases28 last year. That simply means that it was not in those cases decided either way. But what, about the so-called "reservation" cases?29 If the title has passed to the State how can the United States reserve it for the une of anybody? "Finally, why, if the title is already in the State, is Federal legislation now sought? Certainly Congress has no power to act wHh respect to property, the title to which has already vested in the State. , "It seems to me that this series of questions exposes the fallacy of the so-oalled Colorado doc- trine. and shows the logical necessity of thinking in terms of the historic California doctrine if we are to arrive at any realistic conclusions." and, again, "From the standpoint of property rights, while anyone might question the prudence of it, I doubt that anyone could question the power of Congress to give away pro- perty. I think it is also competent for Congress to say to Federal officers that they shall conform to State law as far as they can without defeating the Federal purpose-iil'tne acquisition of water rights. "But the rub oomes when State law either does not make adequate provision for the needs of a particular Federal project or program or when it makes provision' incompatible with the aooomplishment of the Federal purpose. The Interior Department itself has pointed out, in its reports on some of the pendi~~ bills, that some State laws do not even recognize some of its own programs as beneficial purposes. And if this is true of the Interior Department, it is a fortiori true of many programs administered by other Departments. I think that my brother Chj.lson misses the mark when he argues that there should not be two bodies of so-called water law - one Federal and one State. No one that I -lla