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THAT HUMAN BEING, 
 LEONARD WOOD 
 
 BY 
 
 HERMANN HAGEDORN 
 
 " All of us who give service, and stand ready for 
 sacrifice, are the torch-bearers. We run with 
 the torches until we fall, content if we can 
 then pass them to the hands of other runners." 
 Theodore Roosevelt 
 
 u 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 
 
 1920 
 
. wS^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC. 
 
 m - i ^^^ 
 
 THE QUINN a BODEN COMPANY 
 RAHWAY. N. J. 
 
 ©nf.A57)5740 
 
dTo 
 
 HAROLD PULSIFER 
 
NOTE 
 
 For much of the biographical material 
 which Is the basis of this sketch the author 
 is indebted to General Wood himself and to 
 members of his staff, notably Colonel E. H. 
 Humphrey and Colonel John C. H. Lee; to 
 Mrs. Sara L. Beckwith, of the Bureau of 
 Insular Affairs in Washington, Mr. Herbert 
 L. Statesir, of the War Department, and 
 Major Edward Clark; and to Mr. Wilson L. 
 Gill, under whose direction the " school city " 
 project was established in Cuban schools; as 
 well as to the authors of various books 
 and magazine articles dealing with General 
 Wood's character and career, especially Mr. 
 Ray Stannard Baker, Mr. Joseph Hamblen 
 Sears and Mr. John G. Holme. For the 
 guidance or active assistance which each gave 
 him, the author desires to express his warm 
 appreciation. 
 
 H.H. 
 
 New York, March i, 1920. 
 
THAT HUMAN BEING, 
 LEONARD WOOD 
 
 WHAT, in the name of things wiser 
 than dictionaries, is a human 
 being? 
 
 The theories of the dictionaries on the 
 subject are vague and general. They 
 imply that all things that clothe their 
 means of locomotion in trousers or skirts 
 are human beings; all things that eat and 
 sleep and have the capacity to grumble; 
 that worry and stew and tyrannize and 
 procrastinate; that reason and spout 
 rhetoric; that sentimentalize and con- 
 fuse; that smile and hate and are gra- 
 cious, and pray and preach and bear 
 watching. The dictionaries are wrong. 
 3 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 There have been creatures who have 
 done all those things, and still have not 
 been human; there have been kings and 
 potentates who have done stranger things, 
 standing astride of oceans, for instance, 
 and juggling nations like little colored 
 balls in the air; and they have not been 
 human beings at all. 
 
 What then makes a being human? 
 
 It is understanding; first of all and 
 last of all, it is understanding. It is 
 not book-learning, it is not even wisdom, 
 for the sage who wrote the proverb, urg- 
 ing man to " get wisdom," urged in the 
 same breath, " and with all thy getting, 
 get understanding." It is humility that 
 makes a being human, humility born of 
 mistakes and frailties and failings and 
 defeats; it is knowledge of men and of 
 the strange twistings and turnings, the 
 curious contradictions of baseness and 
 splendor, in the hearts of men, that makes 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 a being human. It is the sympathy, born 
 of such knowledge, and the tenderness 
 born of sympathy; it is a sense of humor; 
 it is respect for facts and scorn for self- 
 delusion; it is all these things, comprised 
 in the one thing — understanding — that 
 makes a being human. 
 
 Explain understanding and you ex- 
 plain what constitutes the difference be- 
 tween an intellectual mechanism and a 
 human being. A man, asked to define 
 the word, might echo the reply of a 
 certain statesman, asked to define an 
 " overt act " — '^ I don't know what it is 
 but I think I shall be able to recognize 
 it when I see it." Understanding is 
 known best by the way it draws to it the 
 struggling and bewildered hearts of men. 
 
 " If I were on a schooner in a hurri- 
 cane with the seas like mountains around, 
 and I were to grope my way in panic out 
 
 5 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 of bed and across the deck to the man at 
 the wheel, and were to look under his 
 sou'wester and discover it was Leonard 
 Wood, I'd say, ' Oh, it's all right then! ' 
 and go to bed again and rest easy. 
 That's the way I feel about Leonard 
 Wood." 
 
 So one man spoke; so, millions, de- 
 pendent on his vigilance and strength in 
 remote corners of the world, have seemed 
 to feel in years past; so, men and women, 
 in numbers not yet to be estimated, seem 
 to feel in his own country to-day. 
 
 Who is this man, Leonard Wood? 
 What has he done? What manner of 
 man is he? What qualities does he pos- 
 sess that make thousands of men and 
 women turn to him for leadership with 
 fervor and trust? Is he a real leader or 
 is he merely the shadow of Roosevelt, 
 his friend? Is he a real statesman or is 
 he merely a well-advertised child of 
 6 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 fortune? Is he a real man or is he a 
 stuffed club? 
 Let us see. 
 
 His photographs are against him, for 
 his photographs, with few exceptions, 
 show his face in repose, and his face in 
 repose is not the man at all, but a mask 
 for a grim animal known as a general, 
 worn as he wears his two stars, as a part 
 of the uniform, a symbol of determina- 
 tion, more useful than many orations in 
 making clear to an army of happy-go- 
 lucky doughboys the elementary rules 
 of the game. At its grimmest — and it is 
 generally at its grimmest facing the 
 camera — the mask is something to 
 frighten babies with, and to horrify the 
 dyspeptic with suggestions of platforms 
 advocating the use of brass tacks in hash 
 and of cayenne-pepper in tea. The jaw 
 has a terrifying strength; the firm, 
 
 7 
 
Leonard IVood 
 
 straight mouth, the small and distant 
 eyes, the whole Gibraltar-like solidity of 
 the depicted features, suggest a Rus- 
 sian imperial governor preparing for the 
 daily massacre, or a Japanese Elder 
 Statesman about to annex the world. 
 
 Behind the mask the real man lives his 
 varied and colorful life, doing three 
 days' work in one with a minimum of 
 noise and the energy of thirty-five ; grave, 
 patient, humorous, tender, with a for- 
 bearance that seems inexhaustible; 
 tolerant, considerate, humble; capable 
 of annihilating with a glance or a sud- 
 den, sharp word, but vastly preferring 
 conciliation on a basis of give and take 
 to the easier solution of brute force; a 
 devoted husband, father and friend; a 
 magnetic leader, who binds his sub- 
 ordinates to him by his sense of justice, 
 his consideration, his confidence, his 
 open mind and his sheer lovableness, 
 8 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 and disarms his opponents by the pa- 
 tience of his search for facts and his 
 eagerness to understand and to be under- 
 stood. 
 
 The world knows the mask; only his 
 friends and close associates know the 
 real human being that is Leonard Wood. 
 
 ^^ He is just like a chestnut-bur," said 
 one who for years had known him better 
 possibly than almost any one else. " All 
 spines outside, but so soft and tender at 
 heart." 
 
 The outside of the bur is the Elder 
 Statesman who poses for photographs; 
 the inside of the bur is the delightful 
 companion of a small circle who smiles 
 with a whimsical, boyish air and de- 
 velops a double chin when he chuckles. 
 
 Physically, he is just under six feet, 
 deep-chested and solid. His face is the 
 color of pink granite and suggests gran- 
 ite in other ways, being rugged and 
 
 9 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 deeply marked. The eyes are the clean 
 blue of a windswept sky; the nose is 
 broad and dominant; the mouth like a 
 statue's in repose and full of life and 
 individuality in speech. His close- 
 cropped mustache is gray; but his hair 
 is sandy-colored and young-looking. His 
 voice is low. He is sparing with words. 
 He reads without glasses. His left leg is 
 stiff, owing to an injury received in 
 Cuba, and he walks with a rolling gait 
 like a sea-captain who has learnt to 
 negotiate any sea. 
 
 His life is mainly work and his work 
 is mainly service. He is out of bed 
 early, at six or five or four-thirty, and 
 reads or rides before breakfast, works all 
 day and reads, when he can, at night. 
 He eats moderately and, true to his sea- 
 faring ancestors, can and likes to live on 
 sardines. Now and then he forgets that 
 lunch is a part of the normal human 
 
 lO 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 schedule. He is difficult to tire out, 
 owing partly to his magnificent health 
 and robust physique and partly to his 
 ability to sleep anywhere at any time at a 
 moment's notice. He has been known to 
 work eighteen hours, sleep two, and work 
 eighteen more. Whenever possible, he 
 fills the empty minute with sleep in order 
 that the full minute shall have every 
 ounce of his energy. 
 
 He is a great nature lover, distinctly 
 an outdoor man; and he has to-day the 
 physical vigor of manhood in its prime, 
 because he has all his life made it a 
 part of the day's work to keep the body 
 in trim. His bouts at singlestick with 
 President Roosevelt are ancient history; 
 but he has his bouts at singlestick to- 
 day. He boxes, he rows, he rides. When 
 he rows, he rows twelve or fifteen miles ; 
 when he rides, he rides some large- 
 boned hunter who makes him work. At 
 II 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 Camp Funston, he used to go through 
 a program of athletic '^ stunts " nightly 
 with the officers of his staff, stripping 
 off his coat, a match for the hardiest. 
 There was one " stunt " in which he was 
 the champion. With his forearm rest- 
 ing upright on the table and his fist 
 clenched, he challenged the men of his 
 staff to budge it. They tried it in suc- 
 cession and failed; whereupon they sent 
 for outside talent. The strong men of 
 the 89th Division, the farmers, the black- 
 smiths, the coal-heavers, were requisi- 
 tioned; but without result. The Gen- 
 eraPs arm remained unmoved and im- 
 movable. 
 
 He has no dominant tastes except for 
 his friends, his work, his books and his 
 dogs. He loves dogs, '' any kind of dogs 
 that have golden hearts," mongrel pups 
 and foundlings left on his doorstep, pre- 
 ferred. He smokes moderately and, in 
 12 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 the days before the Long Drought, drank 
 his glass of wine in the same fashion. 
 His musical ear is about as sensitive as 
 was that of Colonel Roosevelt, who 
 boasted that he could tell the difference 
 between " Yankee Doodle " and the 
 " Star-Spangled Banner," but admitted 
 that all other delicate distinctions of 
 sound were beyond his grasp. He de- 
 tests problem plays and cares little for 
 plays in general, but is better than the 
 show itself at a good comedy which hap- 
 pens to kindle his risibilities. He reads 
 steadily, widely and intelligently, mainly 
 history and government; but knows 
 English literature thoroughly and Span- 
 ish literature just as well. He speaks 
 Spanish fluently and has struck thirteen 
 more than once in Spain and in South 
 America by his ability to address gather- 
 ings in the language of the country. His 
 French makes up in enthusiasm for what 
 
 13 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 it lacks in technical exactness. ^* Mar- 
 shal Joffre, sitting between Roosevelt and 
 Wood at a banquet in New York," a 
 friend of all three men reported, 
 " seemed lost between bewilderment and 
 hilarity as he heard his native tongue 
 tortured to death on his right hand and 
 murdered in cold blood on his left." 
 
 His writing, like his talk, is clear, terse 
 and almost abrupt. When his heart is 
 not in it, it has a tendency to be a bit 
 heavy-footed ; but when his emotions are 
 kindled the words burn and sweep along 
 in a rhythmic prose that has the sincerity 
 and simplicity of authentic literature and 
 is as easy to understand as the Ten Com- 
 mandments. His demobilization order 
 to the loth Division and his farewell to 
 the men of the 89th, known as " Wood's 
 Orphans," when they embarked without 
 him for France, have in their hundred or 
 two hundred words the surcharged qual- 
 
 14 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 ity of great orations. As an impromptu 
 speaker he is effective but not compel- 
 ling. Audiences listen to him because 
 they like what he says; not because he 
 has any of the arts of the spellbinder. 
 He is impressive because he is sincere. 
 He kindles men not by showering them 
 with sparks but by bringing them into 
 contact, as it were, with the fierce heat of 
 his own convictions. 
 
 IS 
 
II 
 
 50 much for the man, Leonard Wood, 
 as he walks and talks in Chicago or 
 flashes for a hectic day through New 
 York, or sets on edge the teeth of a 
 nervous and somewhat emaciated, elderly 
 Administration where she rocks at a 
 window in Washington, conscious that 
 fall is in the air. 
 
 " A vivid personality," agrees the 
 gentleman from Missouri. *' I didn't 
 realize how much of a human being he 
 was. I admit I was fooled by the mask. 
 But a vivid personality may make a 
 mighty poor executive. How does he 
 handle himself in a crisis? You talk of 
 conciliation, of seeking to understand 
 and to be understood. If I know 
 Leonard Wood he prefers the meat-ax." 
 i6 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 Let us see. 
 
 In the autumn of 191 9, four hundred 
 thousand workingmen threw down 
 their tools in the steel mills of the 
 country and went on strike. Violence 
 was threatened; here and there actual 
 violence occurred. Leonard Wood, com- 
 manding general of the Army in the 
 Central Department, covering a terri- 
 tory as large as Europe, set his troops 
 in readiness and waited for the telephone 
 to ring. 
 
 Early in October it rang. The Gov- 
 ernor of Indiana feared mob violence in 
 Gary and wanted a regiment there to 
 preserve law and order. General Wood 
 replied that the regiment would be sent. 
 Fifteen minutes later the men were fall- 
 ing into line. The General announced 
 that he himself would go and take charge 
 of the situation. 
 
 There was a scurrying and a wild con- 
 17 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 ferring among the General's political 
 supporters when the news was noised 
 abroad. Frantic appeals came over the 
 telephone from various parts of the city. 
 
 '' Don't go to Gary! " his friends pro- 
 tested. " That strike situation has too 
 much dynamite in it. As a candidate 
 for President you haven't the right to 
 risk it. Send some subordinate. If you 
 go to Gary, sure as you're born, you'll 
 have to shoot a lot of people and that 
 will be the end of you." 
 
 His jaw seemed to settle into place. 
 " All right," he answered, looking for 
 all the world like an unhappy but reso- 
 lute old Roman about to slay his only 
 daughter. " If it's the end of me, it's 
 the end of me and there's nothing more 
 to be said. But I won't send a sub- 
 ordinate down there, and then, if things 
 go wrong, protect myself by making a 
 subordinate carry the blame." 
 i8 
 
Ljeonard Wood 
 
 He went. The dynamite was there, it 
 was there in quantities to make the ordi- 
 nary man with political ambitions and 
 an eye for political consequences quake 
 in his boots. But somehow it did not go 
 off. General Wood did not seem to say 
 very much; he did not appear to be 
 doing very much. But the news which 
 every one was expecting from that turbu- 
 lent strike-center did not '' break." Gary, 
 which had exhibited symptoms of incipi- 
 ent chaos, suddenly quieted down and 
 slipped out of the news entirely. 
 
 What had happened? The representa- 
 tives of the press, cooling their heels in 
 the corridor outside the office of the 
 Mayor of Gary, never had an inkling of 
 it. General Wood did not invite them 
 to his dramatic little party inside, and 
 they missed a gorgeous opportunity to 
 see how a human being could, by his 
 very humanness, dominate a critical 
 
 19 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 situation. It was the General's chief of 
 staff who afterwards told the story. 
 
 General Wood arrived in Gary ahead 
 of the troops, at seven o'clock in the 
 evening, and proceeded at once to the 
 Mayor's office. An ugly crowd filled the 
 streets outside the City Hall, evidently 
 strikers. He noticed several men who 
 were in uniform, and turned to his aide. 
 " Ask those service men to come to see 
 me," he said quietly. 
 
 In the Mayor's office, the leading 
 town officials were gathered. 
 
 '^ Tell me the situation," said the Gen- 
 eral. 
 
 The Mayor explained it at length. 
 The strike-leaders, themselves, it seemed, 
 were reasonable men. The real source 
 of trouble were certain agitators, who 
 were the leaders of a small radical group 
 who had gained an unsavory reputation 
 during the War and were now spurring 
 20 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 the strikers to violence. The General sent 
 for the labor leaders and for one of the 
 agitators. 
 
 Twenty minutes later, he had all the 
 factors in the situation before him — the 
 town officials, representing law and 
 order; the agitator, representing vio- 
 lence; the labor leaders, representing the 
 strikers; and the three men in uniform 
 out of the crowd, representing the flag. 
 
 " I am about to issue a proclamation," 
 he said, standing before them, " and I 
 want you all to hear it and to understand 
 the situation." Then he dictated a state- 
 ment forbidding parades and public as- 
 semblages in the streets and the carrying 
 of firearms; and laying down certain 
 regulations regarding men in uniform. 
 Theaters, lecture halls, moving-picture 
 places and other well-conducted places 
 of amusement, he declared, should con- 
 tinue as usual. 
 
 21 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 " You have heard what will be ex- 
 pected of the citizens of Gary," he con- 
 cluded. *^ The regulations laid down in 
 this proclamation are all that there are. 
 There will be no secret instructions." 
 
 Thereupon he sent the statement to 
 the press and turned to the eldest of the 
 three service men. If the man expected 
 to be " blown up," he was disappointed. 
 " Corporal," said the General in the tone 
 of one seeking information, " you knew 
 that the Mayor of Gary had forbidden 
 the strikers to parade. Why were you and 
 these other service men in that crowd, 
 and why were you in uniform? " 
 
 " We put on our uniforms, sir," the 
 corporal answered, ^^ because we wanted 
 to hold the crowd down to an orderly 
 meeting and keep them from burning the 
 plant or the city as some of them were 
 out to do. And we thought our uniforms 
 might help." 
 
 22 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 "Are you strikers? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." The man lifted his head. 
 " But we are Americans first." 
 
 The GeneraFs face cleared. " Good! " 
 he exclaimed. ^' I congratulate you. 
 YouVe got the right point of view. 
 Are you members of the American 
 Legion? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 "That's fine! I suggest that you call 
 a meeting of your post and make it gen- 
 erally known that you stand for law and 
 order and propose to support the authori- 
 ties." 
 
 "We have called a meeting for to- 
 night, sir." 
 
 " Good. Tell the men that I should 
 be glad to have their help in keeping 
 order in Gary. All who volunteer will 
 be sworn in as deputy sheriffs." 
 
 Then the General turned to the labor 
 leaders. There were three of them pres- 
 23 
 
Leonard vvood 
 
 ent. The General addressed the one who 
 was evidently the spokesman. 
 
 "Mr. Anderson," he said, " you repre- 
 sent the strikers, I understand. I want 
 to make one thing clear to you and to the 
 workers you represent. I want you to 
 understand that the military forces are 
 in Gary not in the interest of the steel 
 operators and not in the interest of the 
 strikers, but to maintain law and order. 
 In our official capacity we are not in- 
 terested whether the strike continues or 
 not. We may have our personal opin- 
 ions, but these do not affect our actions. 
 The military forces of the United States 
 represent the government of the United 
 States, and between operators and 
 strikers, the government of the United 
 States is absolutely neutral. We are here 
 to maintain law and order. We are here 
 to see that the citizens of Gary are pro- 
 tected in their peaceful pursuits and that 
 
 24 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 individual and property rights, under 
 the law, of the striking employees of the 
 steel mills are protected, as well as 
 the rights of other citizens and of the 
 Steel Corporation." 
 
 " General," said the strike leader, 
 " that's fair enough. That's just what 
 we want. We have no kick against the 
 troops being in Gary. We're glad they're 
 here because we believe that under your 
 orders they'll give us square treatment. 
 Now what about picketing? " 
 
 The General's answer carqe quick and 
 clear. *^ Picketing in reasonable num- 
 bers is permissible. Mr. Anderson, I 
 mean by that, that your picketing must 
 consist of offering arguments, remon- 
 strances, anything of that kind which you 
 may want to offer to the workers in the 
 steel mills to bring them round to your 
 point of view. But in no circumstances 
 must you offer them personal violence, 
 
 25 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 nor must you use threats. I say reason- 
 able numbers, and by that I mean that 
 you may have two or three men in one 
 part of the street and two or three twenty 
 or thirty yards away, and so on." 
 
 " I get you, General. What about 
 picketing at the gates?'' 
 
 " You may have a small party on 
 picket duty at the gates. I say * reason- 
 able number ' and restrict you to small 
 parties not because I do not have abso- 
 lute confidence in you and your associates 
 to help us keep order, but because I am 
 afraid that if these parties are allowed 
 to consist of a considerable number of 
 men they are liable to contain some 
 elements that stand for disorder and I 
 am afraid, Mr. Anderson, that you will 
 not be able to control your own people." 
 
 " I see the point. How about meet- 
 ings?" 
 
 " Have all you want. It's your consti- 
 26 
 
 1 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 tutional right. But have them indoors 
 and don't let any one preach sedition. 
 The reason I don't want you to hold 
 them outdoors is because outdoor meet- 
 ings cannot be controlled by the men in 
 charge of them. You can have any one 
 you want to address your meetings. But 
 you will be personally responsible that 
 no disorder occurs and that nothing is 
 said advocating the overthrow of Ameri- 
 can institutions." 
 
 There was one man who stood a little 
 apart from the others, apart from the 
 town officials, apart from the service men, 
 apart from the labor leaders. His ex- 
 pression left no doubt that he was fully 
 aware of the drift of the conversation. 
 
 The General turned to him with finger 
 pointed. " You," he said sharply, " you 
 have come to this country to find a free- 
 dom which was denied you in the land 
 of your birth. You have established 
 27 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 yourself here and, I understand, have 
 built up a lucrative business. You are a 
 man of some education and should 
 know better than to use your talents for 
 the purpose of stirring up people, who 
 do not understand our language or our 
 institutions, to violence against our gov- 
 ernment. You have done everything in 
 your power to overthrow the system of 
 law and order which gave you the oppor- 
 tunity to live and work and prosper to 
 any extent that your native abilities per- 
 mitted. I want you to understand clearly 
 that you stand here to-day under a mili- 
 tary regime which has just been insti- 
 tuted for the purpose of maintaining law 
 and order. If during the time the mili- 
 tary are in control, you utter or publish 
 inflammatory matter tending to stir up 
 these people to the point where they dis- 
 regard law and order and resort to vio- 
 lence, you will be promptly suppressed 
 28 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 and, if necessary, shot. Do you under- 
 stand?" 
 
 The man looked up into the General's 
 face. " Yes, sir," he said in subdued 
 tones. 
 
 " That's all," said the General. " You 
 can go." 
 
 The sinister little man slipped from 
 the room, and the General, undisguisedly 
 glad that he was gone, passed round the 
 semicircle, shaking hands warmly with 
 each man. 
 
 " Is everything clear as far as you men 
 are concerned? " 
 
 The men nodded their heads. 
 
 " I am here to maintain law and order, 
 and law and order are going to be main- 
 tained. Don't you want to help maintain 
 them yourselves? " 
 
 "Yes, sirl" 
 
 "Yes, General!" 
 
 "You bet you 1" 
 
 29 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 " You are simply American citizens 
 protecting your own homes. I want you 
 to know that the military want conflict 
 less than anybody. I hope there will be 
 no trouble, now that we understand each 
 other." 
 
 The men filed out of the room. From 
 the streets came the sound of rolling 
 trucks. The troops were arriving in the 
 city. But there was nothing but patrol 
 duty for them to do. No shot was fired 
 during the military occupation of Gary. 
 
 Leonard Wood had made shooting 
 unnecessary. 
 
 30 
 
Ill 
 
 THE thing that turned the trick at 
 Gary and, in the very face of chaos, 
 laid the foundation of a deeper apprecia- 
 tion of the dtities of government, on the 
 one hand, and of the loyalty and reason- 
 ableness of labor on the other, was real 
 statesmanship ; and it was that most effec- 
 tive form of statesmanship which is 
 based on the qualities which differentiate 
 an intellectual apparatus from a human 
 being. General Wood wanted to under- 
 stand; and he wanted to be understood. 
 He questioned, he explained; and with 
 sure steps, leaving no issues vague, he 
 proceeded from point to point until, for 
 all, the situation was clarified, and every 
 one knew exactly what he could do and 
 what he could not do. 
 
 31 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 There were no cloudy generalizations 
 to bewilder and confuse. The General 
 talked a language which the common 
 man could comprehend. 
 
 *'What is General Wood's attitude 
 toward union labor? " asked a laboring 
 man in the course of a meeting in Chicago 
 of Lodge No. 83 of the Switchmen of 
 North America, a week or ten days after 
 General Wood came to Gary. 
 
 John Fitzpatrick, president of the 
 Chicago Federation of Labor and organ- 
 izer of the Gary strike, answered the ques- 
 tion. " I'll tell you about General Wood's 
 attitude toward union labor," he said. '* I 
 called on the General to negotiate for an 
 outdoor labor meeting at Gary. The 
 General gave the permission at once, and 
 he did more than that. He helped me to 
 find a good place to hold the meeting. 
 He said that he wanted to give the strikers 
 a square deal and that any time I wanted 
 
 32 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 to have another meeting in Gary, he 
 would be glad to give the necessary 
 authority, providing the meeting was 
 conducted by a responsible man who 
 would guarantee that no inflammatory 
 speeches would be made or anything said 
 against the United States government. 
 I hand it to him. There's nothing wrong 
 with General Wood's attitude toward 
 union labor." 
 
 And the " Central Labor News " of 
 Gary, rejoicing at the " square deal " that 
 labor had received, remarked, " It just 
 only goes to show that a head is advisable 
 in cases of strife. When one has a head 
 that is trained and fair no one can help 
 but be gratified." 
 
 " A disposition to preserve," says 
 Burke, " and an ability to improve, taken 
 together, would be my standard of a 
 
 statesman." 
 
 33 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 The crisis at Gary revealed not only 
 Wood's '' disposition " but also his ability 
 to '' preserve." What of his disposition 
 and his ability to ''improve"? 
 
 In plain English, what qualities of 
 constructive statesmanship does he pos- 
 sess? Let us see. 
 
 The American forces captured Santi- 
 ago de Cuba in July, 1898. Two weeks 
 later, Leonard Wood, who had dis- 
 tinguished himself in the organization of 
 the Rough Riders and had proved a cool- 
 headed commander in the field, was 
 appointed Military Governor of that out- 
 wardly beautiful and inwardly loathsome 
 pest-house of southeastern Cuba. 
 
 The condition of Santiago, when Gen- 
 eral Wood assumed command, was al- 
 most beyond belief. " You could smell 
 it ten miles at sea," an old sea-captain 
 declared. The buzzards fed on the 
 corpses in the streets; in the prison-pits, 
 
 34 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 men and women, the sane and the mad, 
 the quick and the dead, the innocent and 
 the guilty, lay in a horrible jumble of 
 reeking humanity. There were no doc- 
 tors, there was no sanitation. Men died in 
 the streets and were left to the dogs be- 
 cause the living were too weak to bury 
 them. There was no government, there 
 were no law courts, there were no police. 
 It was a desperately sick city, and 
 Leonard Wood the physician set himself 
 to bring it back to health. He cremated 
 the dead ; for the fever-stricken he estab- 
 lished hospitals; and every human crea- 
 ture, man, woman or child, that could 
 stagger about on its own legs he set to 
 work to purge and disinfect the city. 
 He himself cleared out the prisons, day 
 after day sitting in judgment, as the poor 
 wretches, imprisoned years before at the 
 whim of some Spanish Governor Gen- 
 eral who had long ago sailed for home 
 
 35 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 and forgotten their existence, were 
 brought to the light of day for trial, and 
 freedom. He was everywhere at once, 
 working through countless subordinates, 
 yet seeming to give to each detail his 
 personal touch; everlastingly busy, car- 
 rying in his head a dozen constructive 
 projects, yet always, it seemed, accessible; 
 now in his office, working out a code of 
 law for the province, now on the street, 
 suddenly alighting from his horse and 
 showing a clumsy wielder of a bamboo 
 broom that it is easier to sweep downhill 
 than up. 
 
 " I was frequently in Santiago after 
 the surrender," said Theodore Roosevelt 
 later, " and I never saw Wood when he 
 was not engaged on some one of his mul- 
 titudinous duties. He was personally 
 inspecting the hospitals; he was per- 
 sonally superintending the cleaning of 
 the streets; he was personally hearing the 
 
 36 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 most important of countless complaints 
 made by Cubans against Spaniards, 
 Spaniards against Cubans, and by both 
 against Americans; he was personally en- 
 gaged in working out a better system of 
 sewerage; or in striving to secure the 
 return of the land tillers to the soil. I do 
 not mean he ever allowed himself to be 
 swamped by mere detail ; he is much too 
 good an executive officer not to delegate 
 to others whatever can safely be dele- 
 gated; but the extraordinary energy of 
 the man is such that he can in person 
 oversee and direct much more than is 
 possible with the ordinary man." 
 
 " Organization is the simplest thing in 
 the world," said Leonard Wood, " if you 
 will just build your house before you try 
 to place the bric-a-brac on the mantel." 
 
 Leonard Wood was in Santiago as 
 Governor for a matter of sixteen months. 
 During that time he cleaned and drained 
 
 37 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 a city which had never dreamed of sanita- 
 tion before, reducing the daily death rate 
 from two hundred to ten, superintended 
 the distribution of rations, stamped out 
 two or three epidemics and built countless 
 hospitals, administered justice, worked 
 out a code of laws based on the best in 
 the American and Spanish systems, de- 
 vised a scheme of finance, instituted a 
 criminal and civil judiciary, a new 
 public school system, and a systerti of 
 taxation; paved streets and built high- 
 ways, dredged the harbor, built light- 
 houses, increased the city's water supply; 
 launched an engineering project for 
 draining the malarial swamps near the 
 city and established municipal govern- 
 ments throughout the province, paying 
 all the expenses out of the ordinary reve- 
 nues that he collected and actually laying 
 aside a matter of fifty thousand dollars a 
 month. " It was," in the words of a 
 
 38 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 contemporary, ^' the tour de force of a 
 man of genius."" He called the food 
 profiteers together, talked to them and 
 sent prices tumbling seventy-five per cent; 
 set the press free to abuse him at its 
 own sweet will; governed openly and 
 honestly; and became the idol of the 
 province. 
 
 " It was not so much what General 
 Wood did in Santiago as what he was," 
 said a shrewd observer. " He stood for 
 Americanism. For years the Cubans had 
 been looking to the great nation of the 
 North for succor in their struggle. They 
 had at last been rescued, and the Span- 
 iards had been driven from the Island. 
 Their ideal of the bravery, the honesty, 
 the power, the wisdom of the American 
 was high. He must be everything which 
 the Spanish oppressor was not. And 
 here they had General Wood, the Ameri- 
 can. He was calm, firm, simple, accessi- 
 39 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 ble to poor as well as to rich. He was 
 direct and absolutely truthful in what he 
 said. He had none of the airs of the 
 Spanish governors — a sturdy man in a 
 khaki suit, who went ever)rwhere, saw 
 everything, and could be neither flat- 
 tered, nor cajoled, nor deceived." 
 
 He governed by "horse sense" and a 
 shrewd knowledge of human nature. 
 One of his chief difficulties, it happened, 
 was the unwillingness of the better class 
 of Cubans to co-operate in the civil 
 government. For one reason and another 
 they sulked and hung back, complaining 
 that too many of the minor positions 
 had been given to Spaniards. In a small 
 town near Santiago, Wood was particu- 
 larly anxious to secure a good Cuban 
 Mayor. He threw out intimations to 
 that effect, but word came back to him 
 that none of the men he considered avail- 
 able would dream of taking the post. 
 40 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 One day, the principal storekeeper of 
 the town in question came to the Gov- 
 ernor's Palace to see about a small con- 
 tract for fodder. After concluding the 
 business matter, the General pretended to 
 consult a letter. 
 
 " By the way, senor," he remarked, 
 " you are an old resident of this country 
 and perhaps you could give me a little 
 advice." 
 
 The storekeeper visibly expanded and 
 assured his Excellency that he was at his 
 Excellency's service. 
 
 " Is it true then," Wood continued, 
 " that the Cuban gentlemen are very in- 
 differently educated and are afraid to 
 accept civil offices for fear of appearing 
 to disadvantage in comparison with the 
 Spanish employees?" 
 
 The Cuban blew up with a roar. 
 
 " Ah, well," said the General quietly 
 when the storekeeper's harangue in de- 
 
 41 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 fense of his countrymen was over at last, 
 *^ I merely wanted your opinion and I 
 am sure I am very much obliged. 
 You'll consider this conversation private, 
 of course? " 
 
 The storekeeper swore that he would, 
 but as the General had anticipated, he 
 told the whole town. A few days later 
 one of the leading Cuban citizens was 
 appointed Mayor, and promptly ac- 
 cepted. 
 
 Wood kept his troops altogether in 
 the background, exterminating the ban- 
 dits who infested the province with the 
 Cuban rural guards which he estab- 
 lished, and keeping order less with a 
 show of force than by virtue of his own 
 calm and steady strength. 
 
 It happened one night that a mob of 
 
 five hundred or more Cubans, caught 
 
 by a wave of recurrent hatred of the 
 
 Spaniard, surrounded the Spanish Club 
 
 ■^^ 42 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 and started to bombard it with bottles 
 and bricks. A breathless messenger 
 rushed to the Palace sentry and a breath- 
 less sentry rushed to the Governor. 
 
 He found him leisurely folding up his 
 papers. " I have heard the rov^," the 
 General remarked quietly before the 
 man had time to speak. " We will go 
 over and stop it." 
 
 He picked up his riding-whip, the 
 only weapon he ever carried, and, accom- 
 panied only by the sentry, strolled across 
 the square to the scene of hostilities. The 
 Spanish Club was in a state of siege, 
 with the excited Cubans throwing mis- 
 siles of all sorts through the shattered 
 panes, and trying to force the main en- 
 trance. 
 
 "Just shove them back, sentry," said 
 the General. 
 
 The sentry swung his gun around his 
 head and through the lane which he 
 43 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 cleared the General made his way to the 
 front door of the club. 
 
 " Now shoot the first man who places 
 his foot on that step," the General added, 
 in calm and unmistakable Spanish. 
 Then he turned and strolled back to the 
 Palace. Within an hour the mob had 
 dispersed. 
 
 Wood's relations with the people of 
 the province were singularly warm and 
 friendly. Bewildered by their first ex- 
 perience with self-government, the 
 Cubans brought him their personal as 
 well as their political problems with the 
 naive trustfulness of children. 
 
 One morning two nuns came to his 
 office from the convent of El Cobre, out- 
 side the city. " Your Excellency," they 
 said, " our Mother Superior is over- 
 worked. But she refuses to take a vaca- 
 tion. She has the deepest admiration 
 for the work your Excellency has done 
 
 44 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 for the poor Cuban people. We want 
 you to help us. We thought perhaps if 
 you would try to persuade her " 
 
 The General's customary gravity re- 
 solved itself into a grin. He was not in 
 the habit of exercising the arts of per- 
 suasion on Mothers Superior. 
 
 " Tell your Mother Superior," he re- 
 sponded, " that, as Governor of Santiago, 
 I command her to take a vacation." 
 
 A day later came a note from the 
 Mother Superior. " My sisters have 
 been altogether too officious. I do not 
 need a vacation in the least. But I yield 
 to higher authority." 
 
 His position, as Protestant executive 
 of a province which was completely 
 Catholic, held possibilities of countless 
 complications, but he was too human not 
 to be broadly tolerant in matters of 
 religion, too skilful an administrator not 
 to be able to disentangle the most obvious 
 
 45 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 of the snarls which Spanish misrule had 
 brought into the relations of church and 
 state, and too good a diplomat not to 
 keep on the best of terms' with the offi- 
 cials of the church while he was doing 
 it. There was high comedy and a touch 
 of farce in more than one situation in 
 which the matter-of-fact man in khaki 
 was thrust by his mediaeval environ- 
 ment. 
 
 It happened that a local priest was 
 elevated to the Bishopric of Santiago, 
 and as Governor, it was as much the 
 General's duty to take a part in the 
 ceremonial procession as it was the 
 Bishop's duty to attend the high func- 
 tions of the temporal authority. The 
 streets were black with the crowds which 
 had come from miles about, and through 
 them, under the Bishop's canopy, walked 
 side by side the Catholic prelate and the 
 Protestant son of Cape Cod. 
 
 46 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 " Thank God, the General is a Catho- 
 lic! " went the cry. " We did not know 
 it." 
 
 Now the Bishop was old and a little 
 feeble and altogether moved to the 
 depths. He found that swinging a cen- 
 ser with one hand was a wearying occu- 
 pation when you were constantly bestow- 
 ing benedictions with the other. He 
 held it in the Governor's direction with 
 an appealing glance. 
 
 The Governor understood and solemnly 
 proceeded to swing the censer, looking 
 possibly more solemn than he intended to 
 look because of the overwhelming temp- 
 tation to grin. The Bishop murmured 
 words of gratitude. 
 
 The day was very hot and the line of 
 march was very long. The Bishop's 
 head began to get a little wobbly on his 
 shoulders as he bent forward again and 
 again to receive the kisses of the devout 
 
 47 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 on his episcopal ring. Every time he 
 bent forward his mitre would slip to one 
 side, and Leonard Wood, with the ut- 
 most gravity, would shift the censer 
 from one hand to the other as he straight- 
 ened the Bishop's hat for him. 
 
 " I thank you, I thank you ! '' sighed 
 the Bishop. " I could not keep this 
 thing on without you." 
 
 At last the interminable march was 
 over. " Thank God, you were with 
 me! " exclaimed the old man. " I could 
 not have made it if you had not been 
 there to help me! " 
 
 " I am afraid I may have shocked the 
 sensibilities of some," the General re- 
 marked. " From your point of view, you 
 know, I am a heretic and bound for 
 hell." 
 
 " Tush, tush! " said the Bishop with a 
 benign smile, "you are a good Catholic; 
 only you do not know it." 
 
 48 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 On January ist, 1900, Leonard Wood 
 became Governor General of the whole 
 island of Cuba. There was a magnifi- 
 cent simplicity in the instructions with 
 which President McKinley set him to 
 work: "To prepare Cuba, as rapidly as 
 possible, for the establishment of an inde- 
 pendent government, republican in 
 form." The details were left to him. 
 One wonders whether any man in the 
 world's history ever received a larger 
 order than that. 
 
 For Cuba — beautiful, chaotic, filthy, 
 ignorant, enticing — had not the remotest 
 notion of the meaning of self-govern- 
 ment. The only government she had 
 ever known was the crass despotism of 
 the Spanish viceroys and the very word 
 was abhorred and held in scorn by the 
 Cuban people. Only a small group, 
 educated in part in the United States, 
 knew anything of the responsibilities of 
 
 49 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 citizenship in a republic. The rest were 
 as ignorant as savages of even the first 
 principles. 
 
 Leonard Wood knew that, to carry out 
 his instructions, he would have to accom- 
 plish three things — to clean up the Island 
 and stamp out yellow fever, to reform 
 the judicial system, and inject into a dis- 
 illusioned people some respect for the 
 orderly processes of law; and, last and 
 most important, to create a body of citi- 
 zens capable of carrying on the adminis- 
 tration of the nation's afifairs. 
 
 The first was a task of science and 
 sanitation ; the second, an undertaking of 
 clear-headed administration; but the 
 third was a labor for Hercules. 
 
 It was characteristic of Wood that, 
 having a four-track mind, he embarked 
 on all three projects at once and used the 
 fourth track for the little matter of re- 
 organizing the railroads, reorganizing 
 SO 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 the postal service, establishing munici- 
 palities, drafting a new marriage code, 
 settling the century-old question of 
 church property appropriated by Spain, 
 dredging harbors, building highways, 
 and in general constructing, largely out 
 of nothing, the intricate machinery of 
 modern social and industrial life. 
 
 But all these activities were secondary 
 to the three fundamental problems which 
 Leonard Wood had been set to solve. 
 
 The cleaning up of the Island was, in 
 spite of the frightful conditions in most 
 of the towns and villages, a compara- 
 tively simple matter, but the yellow-fever 
 terror for a time utterly baffled him and 
 the scientists he set to work to banish it. 
 It was only when the theory that the 
 disease was carried in filth gave way 
 gradually to the conviction that it was 
 carried by the mosquito, that the solution 
 of the problem was found. The story 
 
 SI 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 of the men who gave their lives volun- 
 tarily to prove a theory is a singularly 
 heroic and thrilling one. 
 
 Dr. Lazaer, one of the three scientists 
 in charge of the research, offered him- 
 self as a subject for an experiment for 
 the purpose of demonstrating that yel- 
 low fever could be transmitted by the 
 bite of a mosquito. He was inoculated 
 with a mosquito known to be infected, 
 took the fever and died. Dr. Carroll, 
 another of the three, thereupon offered 
 himself, for further experimentation and 
 was taken ill with the fever, but recov- 
 ered. It was now determined that no 
 efforts should be spared to prove the 
 theory beyond question. The physicians 
 asked General Wood for authority to 
 make experiments on human beings and 
 for money to pay those who volunteered 
 for this unusual service to mankind. 
 Wood told them that any money they 
 
 52 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 needed would be forthcoming and that 
 he himself would assume responsibility 
 for the experiments. 
 
 For weeks in the research hospital 
 at Havana, men offered themselves for 
 experiment, knowing clearly the peril 
 they were incurring. One after another 
 was taken ill and one after another 
 died. For weeks the physicians strug- 
 gled from point to point in their 
 researches, until at last the secret they 
 were after stood revealed. It was a 
 great triumph for American science and 
 a great triumph for Wood, who had in- 
 fused into the little band of heroic men 
 his own spirit of enthusiasm and de- 
 termination. 
 
 The result was worth all it cost. In 
 1 901 the percentage of yellow-fever pa- 
 tients in the hospitals of Cuba was 
 twenty-nine in every thousand of the 
 population. In 1902, on the whole 
 
 53 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 Island, there was one solitary case of 
 yellow-fever. 
 
 The problem of the judicial system of 
 Cuba was intricate in itself and it was 
 not made any less intricate by the psycho- 
 logical factors which entered into it. 
 The code of laws was not bad, but the 
 system under which it had been adminis- 
 tered by the Spanish viceroys smelled to 
 heaven in its rank injustice, with the con- 
 sequence that the average Cuban was 
 thoroughly convinced that law was an 
 instrument of despotism expressly de- 
 signed to place the helpless many in the 
 grip of the powerful few. He shied 
 from the law when he met it. 
 
 Wood went straight to the heart of the 
 problem and gave the Cuban respect for 
 law by giving him a kind of legal pro- 
 cedure for which a human being could 
 have respect. He abolished antiquated 
 methods; removed, as far as possible, the 
 
 54 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 incentive and the opportunity for graft, 
 together with the judges and prosecutors 
 who had been the most notorious 
 grafters; cleaned up the court records, 
 reformed the prison system, and sent 
 through the courts of the Island the 
 word that henceforth the execution of the 
 law must be clean and, within human 
 limitations, swift. 
 
 The effect was exactly the ef5Fect that 
 the advent of intelligent discipline has 
 on a roomful of children, confused by the 
 pointless and illogical tyranny of a 
 domineering pedagogue. The Cuban 
 people calmed down almost over night. 
 Jangled nerves became quiet in the pres- 
 ence of a power that moved justly and 
 intelligently without respect for wealth 
 or social position. 
 
 Cuba healthy, Cuba clean, Cuba law- 
 abiding, Cuba organizing herself to do 
 business with an energetic world, made a 
 55 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 picture that was singularly appealing 
 beside the picture of that reeking prison- 
 pit which Cuba had been. But Wood 
 knew better than any one else that unless 
 the fabric he was raising had a solid 
 foundation of trained and organized 
 public opinion to stand on, it would last 
 as long as American troops gave author- 
 ity to American ideas, and collapse as 
 soon as those troops were withdrawn. 
 Out of an ignorant, dependent, supersti- 
 tious population, far more closely akin 
 to the Spanish peasant of the sixteenth 
 century than to the average American 
 of the twentieth, he must build a citizenry 
 conscious of the responsibilities of self- 
 government and sufficiently informed to 
 be entrusted with the delicate machinery 
 of a modern state. 
 
 There was nothing to build on, nothing 
 except the instinctive desire of the aver- 
 age human being to live in safety and at 
 S6 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 peace with his neighbors, and to have 
 enough to eat. On this foundation, 
 Wood built Cuba's temple of democracy. 
 
 He arranged a constitutional conven- 
 tion, appointed a commission to draw up 
 an elective law, and, on the theory that 
 the only way for the Cubans to learn the 
 mechanics of self-government was by ex- 
 perience, held municipal elections all 
 over the Island within six months after 
 he took control. Meanwhile, even while 
 he was making the people observe his 
 sanitary regulations, he explained to 
 them with characteristic patience and 
 precision exactly why it was necessary 
 that streets and houses should be clean 
 and food for babies should be reasonably 
 wholesome. There was no need to force 
 the new laws upon the Cubans. They 
 obeyed them because they were made 
 to understand their necessity. 
 
 But Wood knew that the education of 
 
 57 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 the adults in the elementary needs of 
 modern existence was the merest stop-gap 
 in the solution of his problem. He saw 
 clearly that what Cuba needed to be a 
 successful, self-governing republic was 
 a new point of view. That point of 
 view was summed up in the words, All 
 for each and each for all. 
 
 He knew that the one way to inculcate 
 the new spirit in the Cuban people was 
 through the schools. With all the re- 
 sources at his command, therefore, he set 
 to work to build, out of nothing, a public 
 school system that would reach the re- 
 motest hovel on the Island. For four 
 years he spent one quarter of the total 
 state revenue of Cuba on the education of 
 Cuba's children. When he came, there 
 was not a public school on the Island; 
 when he ^departed, there were three 
 thousand eight hundred. 
 
 Wood knew that a democracy stands 
 
 58 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 or falls by the quality of its citizenship ; 
 he knew also that good citizenship means 
 something more than the ability to read 
 and write and figure. He knew that an 
 educational system which fails to go be- 
 yond book-learning educates, in fact, as 
 effectively for civic corruption as it edu- 
 cates for civic virtue. He determined, 
 therefore, that the book-learning which 
 the Cuban child received should be di- 
 rected and made vital by definite train- 
 ing in the fundamental principles of 
 democratic government. 
 
 Under the direction of a Supervisor 
 of Moral and Civic Training, who had 
 successfully established " school cities " 
 in some of the schools of New York's 
 East Side, the children were organized 
 in each school into miniature city govern- 
 ments, each with its mayor and town 
 council, its judges, its health officers, its 
 police. To this junior government much 
 59 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 of the discipline of the schools was dele- 
 gated; for Wood saw clearly that only by 
 giving children responsibility can a sense 
 of responsibility be developed. Through 
 these children Wood reached the adults 
 as he could never have reached them 
 with all the proclamations and ordi- 
 nances in the world, emphasizing and re- 
 emphasizing the fundamental truth, that 
 if a democracy is to be successful, its 
 citizens must be governed in all the 
 affairs of life by the Golden Rule, the 
 spirit of friendliness and co-operation, of 
 good manners and cleanliness and hon- 
 esty and justice and kindness. 
 
 The children responded as to a great 
 adventure, and through them, gradually, 
 Wood inculcated into a people that knew 
 not law, the meaning of government and 
 the necessity of submitting to the will of 
 the majority. 
 
 It was a tremendous achievement, one 
 60 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 of the greatest contributions of modern 
 times to the advancement of democratic 
 ideals. In the dust raised by his more 
 spectacular triumphs it passed unnoticed, 
 but the steadiness of the Cuban republic 
 is a monument to the practical vision of 
 the man who taught Cuba citizenship. 
 
 " We have made every effort down 
 here not only to give the Cubans a just 
 government," said Wood at the close of 
 his administration, ^' but to give them a 
 government of the kind they fought 
 for and for which so many of them 
 died." 
 
 He succeeded to a remarkable extent. 
 " All conditions were ripe for a period 
 of utter anarchy," said Roosevelt at the 
 time, " and under a weak, a foolish or a 
 violent man this anarchy would certainly 
 have come. General Wood, by his 
 energy, his firmness, his common sense 
 and his moderation, succeeded in work- 
 6i 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 ing as great an improvement as was 
 possible in so short a time. He rendered 
 services which if performed three thou- 
 sand years ago would have made him a 
 hero mixed up with the sun-god in vari- 
 ous ways." 
 
 It was Wood's combination of sagacity 
 and quick sympathy, of imagination and 
 common sense, of firmness and tact, of 
 dignity and humor, that made it pos- 
 sible for him to advance Cuba in the 
 scale of civilization four hundred years 
 in four. He was a human being and, 
 in consequence, he knew how to live and 
 work with human beings. Men trusted 
 him, because he always meant what he 
 said; because he was resolute; because 
 he was " square " ; because he gathered 
 about him the ablest men he could find, 
 listened to their advice and took it, if 
 convinced that it was sound; because he 
 played no favorites; because he was 
 62 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 always working, not for himself, but for 
 Cuba; because he was loyal, and be- 
 cause he never lost his temper. 
 
 There was a great-hearted humanness 
 in all his actions that won him a degree 
 of affection among the people that was 
 something more than popularity. 
 
 He had a friend among the lesser 
 clergy, a little Spanish priest named 
 Fernandez, to whom Wood had been 
 drawn at first because he was the only 
 Spanish priest who had been willing to 
 conduct memorial services for President 
 McKinley, and whom he came to like 
 because of his tireless devotion to the 
 poor of Havana and his attractive and 
 vigorous personality. He was a dusky, 
 thick-set Basque, kindly and courageous, 
 distinctly a masculine type after the Gen- 
 eral's own heart. In the eyes of the 
 world he was among the least of the 
 servants of God in Havana. 
 
 63 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 It happened, toward the end of 
 Wood's administration, that the Vatican, 
 in gratitude for the settlement of many 
 vexing problems of long-standing be- 
 tween the spiritual and secular authori- 
 ties in Cuba, desired to express in some 
 tangible fashion its appreciation of 
 American fair dealing, and through the 
 papal delegate in Havana inquired of 
 General Wood what form he would like 
 the Church's gratitude to take. 
 
 Wood had an inspiration. " The 
 parish of Montserrat, the richest parish 
 in Havana, is vacant," he said. *^ If you 
 want to honor American fair dealing, 
 make Emilio Fernandez priest there for 
 life." 
 
 From Rome came the answer, ^' It 
 shall be as the Governor General re- 
 quests." 
 
 Wood himself informed the little 
 priest. The man was incredulous. The 
 
 64 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 church of Montserrat was the greatest in 
 Havana. When he realized at last that 
 his good fortune was no dream, he 
 begged that General Wood and Mrs. 
 Wood be his spiritual sponsors at his 
 installation. The General said it was 
 impossible. 
 
 " You forget, we are Protestants," he 
 said. 
 
 " No one who has been as fair as you," 
 the little priest insisted, " can be an 
 enemy of Christ." 
 
 Special dispensation was granted, and 
 for the first time in church history a 
 Catholic priest was led by the hands of 
 Protestants thrice around his church to 
 his installation. It was General Wood 
 who knocked formally on the door of 
 the church asking for admission for his 
 friend and it was the General and Mrs. 
 Wood who finally presented him at the 
 altar. 
 
 6s 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 The incident was characteristic; and it 
 is noteworthy that the little priest " made 
 good." He is to-day a Monseigneur of 
 the Pope's household. 
 
 Men are by nature hero-worshipers, 
 it seems, and the race or nationality seems 
 to make little difference. Once they take 
 a fancy to one of their leaders, they be- 
 come busier than forty gossips in spread- 
 ing the word of his superlative qualities. 
 It was so with the people of Cuba. 
 Once the shyness, the suspicion, the in- 
 born antagonism to " the foreigner " 
 gave way, first, to respect, then to ad- 
 miration, then to affection, stories began 
 to fly from mouth to mouth of the Gov- 
 ernor's more or less superhuman virtues. 
 They were the kind of stories people 
 like to hear, stories that amounted to 
 little enough in themselves, but that 
 showed a wise mind and a large heart. 
 The directress of a fashionable girls' 
 66 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 boarding-school told how the Governor 
 had accepted the invitation to her com- 
 mencement exercises and had won the old 
 Spanish families by going to the trouble 
 of coming in gold lace with all his staff, 
 knowing that gold lace and ceremony 
 were what the school wanted to see. A 
 leper in the San Lazaro had a different 
 kind of story to tell. 
 
 A visitor to the hospital, wandering 
 down a long corridor, came upon him 
 where he lay on his cot, white and ema- 
 ciated. He told his history, which was 
 melancholy enough, filled as it was with 
 the horrors of "Unclean, unclean!" 
 Then, with a faint light in his eyes he 
 pointed to the fresh linen on his bed, 
 the polished floors, the walls without a 
 spot. 
 
 " It was not always this way," he said. 
 " But General Wood sees to it that we 
 are cared for now. He comes over here 
 
 67 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 and visits us and sits and talks and finds 
 out what we want." 
 
 "You mean the Military Governor?" 
 exclaimed the visitor, who knew some- 
 thing of governors from the Spanish 
 days. 
 
 " Why, yes, that is General Wood," he 
 answered. " He is a man. He has a 
 heart. He tries to help us all he can. 
 The food has- not been so good lately. 
 I mean to complain to General Wood 
 the next time he comes and he will 
 change it." 
 
 The Cuban people found Leonard 
 Wood a friend at a time when they 
 needed, above all, a man with the patience 
 and forbearance of a friend. They had 
 been clubbed by the Spaniard to the 
 point of exhaustion, and any suggestion 
 of a rule by force, on the part of the 
 rescuer, even temporarily, would have 
 driven them to madness. 
 68 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 ^^ He succeeded in organizing our gov- 
 ernment," said La Lucha, a leading 
 paper of Havana, commenting on Gen- 
 eral Wood's candidacy for the Presi- 
 dency almost twenty years later, " with- 
 out taking a single false step, without 
 wounding a single Cuban susceptibility. 
 If what Wood did here were better 
 known in his own country; if the diffi- 
 culties he had to overcome to establish 
 the Cuban government were known in all 
 their details by those who must elect 
 him, the work accomplished by this illus- 
 trious man would of itself suffice to make 
 him in the eyes of his people one of the 
 most farsighted politicians and one of 
 the most sagacious executives ever born 
 within the territory of the American 
 Union. That work as chief executive of 
 Cuba is enough to make the reputation 
 of a great statesman, of an energetic man 
 of inflexible justice and courage, and to 
 
 69 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 guarantee the success of his administra- 
 tion at the head of the public interests 
 of his country." 
 
 Wood sought by his moderation to win 
 the confidence not only of the Cubans, 
 but of the Spanish loyalists who formed 
 an influential part of the population. He 
 put the administration of the details of^ 
 this government entirely in their hands, 
 gradually bringing together the opposing 
 groups, by stirring in both an enthusiasm 
 for a common ideal. It was a real 
 achievement, and by a skilful stroke he 
 made the new unity dramatic to the 
 people of the Island. On the night of 
 the inauguration of Cuba's first presi- 
 dent, he persuaded certain members of 
 the newly elected Cuban Congress to call 
 with him at the Spanish Club, where the 
 loyalists were toasting King Alfonso; 1 
 and persuaded influential members of 
 the Spanish Club in turn to come to the 
 70 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 inauguration ball and toast the Cuban 
 republic. It was an imaginative piece 
 of diplomacy that appropriately capped 
 four years of government by sympathy, 
 sagacity, courage and a sense of humor. 
 
 71 
 
IV 
 
 **n^HE part played by the United 
 g States in Cuba," wrote Theodore 
 Roosevelt after his retirement from the 
 Presidency, " has been one of the most 
 honorable ever played by any nation in 
 dealing with a weaker Power, one of the 
 most satisfactory in all respects; and to 
 General Wood more than to any other 
 one man is due the credit of starting this 
 work and conducting it to a successful 
 conclusion during the earliest and most 
 difficult years. General Wood, of course, 
 incurred the violent hatred of many dis- 
 honest schemers and unscrupulous adven- 
 turers, and of a few more or less well- 
 meaning persons who were misled by 
 these schemers and adventurers; but it is 
 astounding to any one acquainted with 
 72 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 the facts to realize, not merely what he 
 accomplished, but how he succeeded (in 
 Cuba and later in the Philippines) in 
 gaining the good will of the enormous 
 majority of the men whose good will 
 could be won only in honorable fashion. 
 Spaniards and Cubans, Christian Fili- 
 pinos and Moros, Catholic ecclesiastics 
 and Protestant missionaries — in each case 
 the great majority of those whose opinion 
 was worth having — grew to regard Gen- 
 eral Wood as their special champion and 
 friend, as the man who, more than any 
 other, understood and sympathized with 
 their peculiar needs and was anxious and 
 able to render them the help they most 
 needed." 
 
 So much for the statesman, combining 
 in himself those two essential qualities of 
 the highest public service, the ^^ disposi- 
 tion to preserve " and the ^' ability to 
 improve." 
 
 73 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 But what of his qualities of leader- 
 ship? Statesmen, even true statesmen, 
 perhaps, may be divided into two great 
 classes, those who listen for the " voice 
 of the people," and hearing it, or seem- 
 ing to hear it, express its verdict in laws 
 and decrees, irrespective of their own 
 judgment of its justice; and those who, 
 because of their training and knowledge 
 of men and history having a deeper 
 vision than most men, courageously strike 
 a new course and prevail on their fellow- 
 citizens to follow them. 
 
 Is Leonard Wood a human seismo- 
 graph, quivering responsive to each dis- 
 tant rumbling of popular vagary, or is he 
 a leader of men? 
 
 Let us see. 
 
 The great War broke on the conscious- 
 ness of the overwhelming majority of the 
 American people with a terrific shock. 
 But to Leonard Wood it brought no sur- 
 
 74 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 prise. He was an old friend of Lord 
 Roberts and had a wide acquaintance 
 among European soldiers and statesmen. 
 He knew that war was in the air and 
 he knew that when it came, the United 
 States could not remain at the same 
 time honorable and untouched. 
 
 He declared in emphatic terms that 
 the American people were without ade- 
 quate defense to meet the peril that 
 might any day confront them. " We 
 must prepare!" he cried. 
 
 His appeal met no response. He 
 sought to establish experimental military 
 training camps for students in their sum- 
 mer vacations. He was told that there 
 was no money available for such a pur- 
 pose. He smiled, set his jaw and set to 
 work to create the camps without money. 
 He secured permission to use army equip- 
 ment on the promise that the War 
 Department should incur no expense 
 
 75 
 
 k 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 through this exhibition of generosity; and 
 instituted camps at Gettysburg and 
 Monterey on a voluntary basis, the 
 students paying their own expenses. 
 This was in 1913. Out of a popu- 
 lation of a hundred million, two 
 hundred and twenty-two young men re- 
 sponded. But those few became apos- 
 tles. Wood lived with them, worked 
 with them, talked with them. His burn- 
 ing sincerity set them afire. They began 
 to see the need, and to feel the thrill of 
 filling it. They formed an organization 
 to promote preparedness. The following 
 year there were not two camps but four, 
 and seven hundred students attended 
 them. Again Wood lived and worked 
 and talked with the men, inspiring them 
 with a passion for national service they 
 had not known before. 
 
 The War broke out in Europe. With 
 a deeper anxiety, a deeper fervor, Wood 
 
 76 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 called on America to prepare. The great 
 bulk of the people were too busy to 
 listen, and the Administration too happy, 
 where it floated on pacifistic dreams, to 
 heed his warnings. Through the press, 
 Roosevelt thundered like a prophet of 
 Israel, and week in, week out, before 
 gatherings large and gatherings small, 
 here, there, and everywhere through the 
 country. Wood preached the gospel of 
 national preparedness with a patriotic 
 fervor which had never before burned in 
 him with so clear a flame. The youth of 
 the country felt it, though their elders 
 were callous. Thirty-five hundred or 
 more attended the camps at Plattsburg 
 and elsewhere that first summer after the 
 sinking of the Lusitania. 
 
 Gradually, as German submarines 
 brought the War nearer and nearer to the 
 heart and conscience of America, Roose- 
 velt's magnificent thunderings and 
 
 77 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 Wood's restrained but glowing eloquence 
 began to have their effect. Here a group 
 and there a group, catching fire, formed 
 organizations to spread the knowledge 
 of the need of national defense. The 
 Administration, sensitive to popular cur- 
 rents, swung overnight from extreme 
 opposition to extreme support. Wood 
 took heart. It was only when the Ad- 
 ministration, having spoken the grand 
 word, let the necessary action evaporate 
 in the hands of a war secretary openly 
 opposed to all preparedness for war, that 
 Wood, unconsulted and unsupported by 
 the authorities, once more set forth to lead 
 the crusade. 
 
 Sixteen thousand men attended the 
 Plattsburg camps during the summer 
 that succeeded. All summer long. Wood 
 traveled from camp to camp. Present 
 or absent, he was the guiding spirit of 
 each camp and the inspiration of the men 
 
 78 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 who had dropped their business, their 
 law, their medicine, to be trained for 
 service when the call came. From dawn 
 until night he was among the men, in- 
 specting, praising, criticizing, directing 
 their manceuvers by day, and under the 
 stars at night explaining to an eager 
 circle the mysteries of military strategy. 
 It is difficult to express in cold phrases 
 the effect that Leonard Wood had upon 
 the men whom he taught and trained in 
 the rudiments of armed defense during 
 that lowering summer preceding Amer- 
 ica's entrance into the War. They were 
 not soldiers by inclination; if ever there 
 were free citizens arming themselves to 
 defend their homes and their liberties, 
 these were such. And they followed him 
 with whole-hearted devotion because they 
 knew that it was to the defense of the 
 best they possessed that he was leading 
 them. 
 
 79 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 It happened one warm September day 
 that a company of rookies was reclining 
 on a wooded slope in the foothills of the 
 Adirondacks. One of them was a small- 
 town cynic, a man who neither in spirit 
 nor mental attitude seemed to " belong," 
 and his comrades had rather wondered 
 why he had come at all. 
 
 " I have been studyin' the General," 
 he remarked as he mopped his brow. 
 " IVe been studyin' him ever since I 
 came to this fool place. I have heard 
 him talk and I have heard you fellows 
 talk about him. Now I always have said 
 that no one ever does anything in this 
 life except for what he can get out of it. 
 So I have been lookin' to see what Gen- 
 eral Wood is goin^ to get out of this 
 preparedness game he has been workin' 
 so hard. And I sure have been puz- 
 zled." There was a pause in his solilo- 
 quy. Then he added, " He can't get any 
 80 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 more pay, he can't get any more rank. 
 By thunder, I have almost come to the 
 conclusion that he is doin' it for his 
 country! " 
 
 He was. He had nothing to gain, ex- 
 cept the devotion of his countrymen ; and 
 he had much to lose. For the Adminis- 
 tration scarcely concealed its displeasure 
 at his efforts to create a public opinion 
 which should demand adequate national 
 defense; and more than once his official 
 neck was in danger. He continued to 
 fight, undeterred. 
 
 The war came to America as he had 
 prophesied it would come. One after 
 another the plans he had suggested long 
 before, while there was yet time, were 
 tardily adopted. The men he had 
 trained at the Plattsburg camps became 
 the backbone of the new great army. 
 But for Leonard Wood there came 
 neither recognition for the service he had 
 8i 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 rendered, nor the opportunity to crown 
 that service with leadership at the front. 
 He appealed for service abroad, but his 
 letters to the authorities in power were 
 not even acknowledged. '^ Wood ought 
 to be court-martialed," a leading member 
 of the President's personal entourage was 
 heard to exclaim. 
 
 Partly undoubtedly because he had 
 advocated preparedness while prepared- 
 ness was not looked upon with favor by 
 the Administration; partly because he 
 was a friend of Theodore Roosevelt and, 
 next to Roosevelt, the outstanding figure 
 in the opposition, having political possi- 
 bilities and an enthusiastic following; and 
 partly because he was masculine-minded 
 during a period when hazy benevolence 
 was accepted by the powers in control as 
 synonymous with virtue and an effective 
 substitute for training and experience, 
 Leonard Wood fared as ill at the hands 
 82 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 of the Administration as that Adminis- 
 tration dared to let him fare, and as his 
 extraordinary ability as an organizer al- 
 lowed. Successive attempts were made 
 to discredit and humiliate him and lay 
 him for all time on the shelf. Wood's 
 friends chuckled quietly as each attempt 
 ended in an extension over a new great 
 territory of the suspicion that the War 
 Department was playing peanut politics, 
 while, with an ability which could not 
 be denied, he turned one more effort 
 at his destruction into an opportunity to 
 do another job well. 
 
 At the very opening of the War, the 
 Department of the East, of which he 
 was commander, was abolished and he 
 was offered his choice of the Philippines, 
 Hawaii or — in the disingenuous phras- 
 ing of the Secretary's order — " the less 
 important post " at Charleston, South 
 Carolina. He chose Charleston, where 
 
 83 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 there was work to do, and immediately 
 set about to establish numerous training 
 camps in the southeastern states. It was 
 four months later that he received the 
 order that placed him in command of the 
 cantonment at Camp Funston in Kansas 
 and of the forty-five thousand untrained 
 and undisciplined young Americans who 
 were to constitute the 89th Division of 
 the National Army. 
 
 It was not the order that General 
 Wood was most eager to receive, but 
 the problem it presented was one after 
 his own heart. He saw not an army, but 
 forty-five thousand individual young 
 men who needed guidance and leader- 
 ship. And with all that was in him he 
 set himself to the task of giving them 
 both. 
 
 It was, indeed, in no sense an army of 
 which he took command in those first 
 days of September, 19 17. The men were 
 
 84 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 drafted men from the great agricultural 
 states of the Middle West, mainly 
 farmers and day-laborers, without physi- 
 cal grace or sense of discipline. General 
 Wood appealed for uniforms. There 
 were none. He bought on his own 
 authority forty-five thousand sets of 
 blue denim overalls with underwear, 
 blankets and comfortables. He appealed 
 for rifles. There were none. He set the 
 men to work making wooden rifles. He 
 appealed for artillery pieces. There 
 were none. He set the men to work 
 making cannon with wooden breech- 
 blocks, projectiles, caissons, set on sleds 
 and the running-gear of old wagons. 
 It occurred to the men that this was 
 rather good fun. 
 
 In their blue overalls with leggins, 
 caps and belts and drilling with their 
 homemade rifles, the men began to look 
 and feel like soldiers. 
 
 85 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 Wood was struck from the first by 
 their earnestness and sincerity, their evi- 
 dent eagerness to do their full duty. It 
 was his task, as he conceived it, to keep 
 undulled this sense of personal responsi- 
 bility and self-respect even while out of 
 his forty-five thousand units he built 
 his great machine. 
 
 " Never laugh at a man however crude 
 he looks," came the order from the 
 General's headquarters to the officers of 
 the Division. " There isn't a man in the 
 Division who does not at heart want to 
 do well. Let nothing in your method of 
 training or your conduct toward your 
 men tend to destroy their own self- 
 respect. Remember that these men are 
 human beings with ambitions, hopes and 
 a hundred changing emotions. Treat 
 them as human beings. If they are to be 
 real soldiers they must be proud of their 
 profession, proud of their officers, proud 
 86 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 of themselves as soldiers. It is your part 
 to see that such loyalty is developed 
 and, once developed, that it is up- 
 held." 
 
 In an extraordinarily short time the 
 spirit of the General began to find its 
 reflection in the attitude of the men. It 
 was rumored that the General had sent 
 out the word, " See that the private gets 
 a fair deal; he's the man least able to 
 take care of himself," and men who had 
 expected militaristic methods began to 
 take heart. " He never said a mean 
 thing to a man," said one of them after- 
 wards, half in awe. He never expressed 
 impatience or dissatisfaction in the pres- 
 ence of the men. No man ever saw him 
 angry. Day in, day out, he was among 
 them, as laboriously they passed through 
 the first stage of the transition from civil- 
 ian to soldier, speaking here a word of 
 praise, giving there a word of quiet ad- 
 
 87 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 vice, patient, considerate and endlessly 
 helpful. 
 
 It happened one day before the 
 Division was three weeks old that the 
 General, riding about the camp, came 
 upon a group of men resting on the 
 side of a hill. He stopped to talk to 
 them. 
 
 They answered his greeting without 
 budging from where they lay stretched 
 comfortably on their backs. 
 
 "The sun's pretty hot," remarked the 
 General. " Are your undershirts wet? " 
 
 The men "allowed" that they were; 
 but did not budge. 
 
 The General's aide was a Southerner, 
 with a hair-trigger temper which at that 
 point went ofif. " What do you mean by 
 lying there? Why don't you stand at 
 attention?" 
 
 The General waved him back and as 
 his aide subsided, turned quietly to the 
 88 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 men again. " You don't know who I am, 
 do you? " 
 
 The men in blue denim admitted that 
 they did not. 
 
 " I am your Division commander, 
 General Wood," he said. 
 
 The men scrambled to their feet. " Is 
 you Wood?" exclaimed one of them, a 
 Kansas farmer boy, with wide eyes. 
 
 The General, with the faintest sug- 
 gestion of a smile playing about the 
 corners of his mouth, admitted that he 
 was. Then, quietly, he talked to them 
 of the profession of arms and of a certain 
 honorable custom which had come down 
 from the days of the knights. ^^ When a 
 knight met a friend," he explained, '^ he 
 raised the visor of his helmet that they 
 might recognize each other as comrades 
 in arms; and that is why soldiers salute 
 each other to-day." 
 
 The men straightened up and their 
 
 89 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 hands flew to their caps. The General 
 answered the salute gravely, and rode on, 
 and a dozen raw recruits stared after 
 him, sharply conscious that they had had 
 a memorable experience. 
 
 Wood knew that to many a young re- 
 cruit the matter of the salute was one 
 of the most galling features of soldiering, 
 and he took every occasion he could find 
 to make the men understand that there 
 was no humiliation in the act. He was 
 driving a motor-car along a country road 
 one day, when he saw a doughboy, who 
 was walking with a girl some distance 
 ahead, suddenly bend down as the motor 
 approached, and tie his shoe-lace. 
 
 The General stopped the car and 
 called the soldier to him. 
 
 "You saw me, didn't you?'' 
 
 The man shuffled about uneasily. 
 " Yes, sir," he said. 
 
 " But in order to avoid saluting me," 
 90 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 the General went on, '^ you pretended to 
 tie your shoe-string. That was it, wasn't 
 it?" 
 
 Reluctantly the man admitted that that 
 was it. 
 
 ^^ Now I'll tell you what I would have 
 done if I'd been in your place," the 
 General remarked. ^' I'd have said to 
 my girl, * ]>J.ow watch me make the old 
 man take my salute!' Get the point?" 
 
 The soldier saluted. " Yes, sir," he 
 said, grinning. 
 
 The General answered the salute with 
 marked precision; and drove on. An- 
 other soldier had learnt the lesson of the 
 interdependence of officers and men 
 necessary to make that mass known as an 
 army. 
 
 On another occasion a rookie strolled 
 up to the General as he was standing 
 beside his car. There was no suggestion 
 of a salute. 
 
 91 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 " How long have you been here? " 
 asked the General. 
 
 " Three weeks." 
 
 " Why don't you salute? Don't you see 
 that flag on the car? " 
 
 " Oh," said the doughboy with interest. 
 " I thought that was your family service 
 flag. Say, how long have you been 
 here?" 
 
 The General explained. 
 
 "Well, I never! " the soldier ejaculated. 
 " IVe got in wrong, ain't I? I want to 
 shake hands with you and ask you to 
 forget it." 
 
 The General spied a sergeant in the 
 background, walking up and down in a 
 manner which indicated that things 
 would shortly go hard with that particu- 
 lar doughboy; and to the General he sup- 
 plied the final element of comedy that 
 the situation needed. He gravely shook 
 hands with the genial youth. 
 92 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 " It may not have been discipline," he 
 remarked afterwards, " but VA have been 
 a cad if I hadn't shaken hands with 
 him." 
 
 It was inevitable that incidents such 
 as these, carried on the lips of awestruck 
 boys, should have a wide effect. It 
 became known that the General never 
 waited for a man to salute him first, and 
 soldiers began to brag of " how they beat 
 the old man to it." 
 
 Wood's hold on the men became in- 
 creasingly firm and sure as stories of his 
 efforts for their well-being trickled 
 through the Division. He could be seen 
 at all hours on horseback or afoot in- 
 specting here, examining there, the first 
 man out of bed in the morning, beating 
 even " reveille," and the last to bed at 
 night. Every day he was in the hospital 
 wards and his cheerful, '' How are you, 
 old man? Getting along all right?" 
 
 93 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 addressed to one man or to a dozen 
 would echo and re-echo among the cots, 
 until men whom the General never saw 
 became somehow convinced that they 
 had personally felt the warmth of his 
 friendly solicitude. 
 
 " Why are the men so fond of 
 Wood?" one of his staff officers was 
 asked. 
 
 " I'll tell you why," was the answer. 
 " Because Bill Smith in the rear rank 
 thinks that as far as the General is con- 
 cerned, he is the whole Division." 
 
 One day a private who had had a little 
 more whiskey than was good for him went 
 up to General Wood and said, " Lend me 
 two dollars, will you? " 
 
 The General knew the man; he knew 
 his record, and it was good. The corners 
 of his mouth flickered with the faintest 
 suggestion of a smile as he handed him 
 the money. 
 
 94 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 " Don't forget," he remarked, "you're 
 to pay it back." 
 
 The General, with a wide experience 
 of soldiers, half seas over, suspected that 
 this particular doughboy's intoxication 
 was not the kind that swallows the events 
 of a night in happy oblivion. He was 
 not mistaken. The next day brought re- 
 membrance to the doughboy and to the 
 General's door an utterly abased and 
 humiliated transgressor. 
 
 Again the smile flickered at the corners 
 of the General's mouth. " It's all right," 
 he said. " Your record was good. And 
 you won't do it again." 
 
 The man's face shone; his record had 
 been good ; from that moment it became 
 distinguished. A flash of human under- 
 standing and forbearance had turned 
 what might have proved the first step 
 toward degradation into a victory for 
 manliness and self-respect. 
 95 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 Wood rode much among the troops, 
 talking to the men during their periods of 
 rest, keeping the officers human by the 
 example of his own humanness, and 
 creating among the men a pride in his 
 leadership by being the kind of leader of 
 whom a man could not help but be 
 proud. There was something uncanny 
 in the Generars ability to be everywhere 
 and see everything. He came, he saw — 
 and very shortly after, the officer re- 
 sponsible received what he deserved. 
 When at night the General found that 
 the windows of barracks were shut which 
 ought to be open, he did not reprimand 
 either privates or company officers. He 
 sent next morning for the brigade-com- 
 mander involved, found that the windows 
 had been shut because the men did not 
 have sufficient blankets, and immediately 
 filled the lack. A private, hearing one 
 officer say to another, '^ The Chief wants 
 
 96 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 the boys to have blankets enough," inevi- 
 tably came to the conclusion that " the 
 Chief " was a man of almost superhuman 
 understanding, and was ready to carry 
 out orders thereafter before they were 
 given. 
 
 " Every man in the 89th Division," 
 said a staff officer later, " seemed himself 
 to want to do what General Wood 
 wanted. The General used to say, 
 ^ There never yet was a bad regiment, 
 but there are plenty of bad colonels.' 
 The men seemed to feel that attitude. 
 He never scolded them when things went 
 wrong, but he gave us officers hell." 
 
 The epidemics of mumps, measles, in- 
 fluenza and spinal meningitis which 
 swept all the great camps brought misery 
 and death to Camp Funston also. 
 
 " In many ways it was worse than a battle," 
 Wood wrote of one of the scourges which 
 had incapacitated a quarter of the men in the 
 
 97 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 cantonment. " But the men behaved splen- 
 didly, no absentees, no complaints. The 
 discipline was undisturbed. Training went 
 on without a hitch and every one was smiUng. 
 None of our men are ever in trouble, and 
 we have not had a single case of an at- 
 tack on women or insulting women. Some- 
 how or other we had discipline without hav- 
 ing to think about it. Perhaps the reason is, 
 that it has commenced with the officers and 
 every one has had to do his best." 
 
 " Soldiers will rise to any level set 
 for them by their officers," he said at 
 another time. " When there is illness or 
 other trouble, that's the time for you 
 to be there." 
 
 He fought for the lives of his men 
 v^ith untiring energy. The great dust- 
 clouds which swept the cantonment at 
 one time were irritating the noses and 
 throats of the soldiers and making them 
 sensitive, he knew, to meningitis and 
 influenza. He bought hundreds of 
 
 98 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 thousands of dollars' worth of crude oil 
 and absolutely saturated the cantonment 
 site and the adjacent reservation. It was 
 a drastic measure, but it laid the death- 
 carrying dust. The following spring he 
 had the land sown in alfalfa, and the 
 dust-borne diseases were stamped out at 
 Camp Funston. 
 
 He watched over the men with a 
 father's watchfulness. There was some- 
 thing glorious to him in the humblest 
 doughboy. 
 
 " You are a band of crusaders," he 
 said to them, " and when as soldiers you 
 kill, you kill only that right may pre- 
 vail." 
 
 To him the willingness to sacrifice was 
 the essence of the soldier's glory and the 
 splendor of the sacrifice to him was the 
 same whether death came on the battle- 
 field or by disease in camp. No home 
 was darkened by the death of a boy 
 
 99 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 of the 89th but a personal letter came to 
 it from Leonard Wood. He knew that 
 in the hearts of many a bereaved father 
 and mother was the bitter consciousness 
 of a vain sacrifice and out of his own 
 conviction he wrote them that their son 
 had died as any soldier on the battle- 
 field, *^ in the great cause of humanity, 
 free institutions and that this country 
 may live in security." It was charac- 
 teristic of his understanding and sym- 
 pathy that, even as he could not think of 
 the soldier apart from the human ambi- 
 tions and hopes, the attractions and re- 
 pulsions of the man within the uniform, 
 he could not think of the man apart from 
 the human beings who made his intimate 
 world. When the War was over, the 
 children of every one of his men who 
 had died in camp or fallen in France 
 received at Christmas a personal letter 
 from him. 
 
 100 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 " This greeting goes to you," he wrote, 
 " with a Christmas remembrance from your 
 father's comrades. Although you will espe- 
 cially miss his cheerful companionship during 
 these holidays, remember he would want you 
 to be happy and that he left you the precious 
 heritage of his noble example. Always carry 
 with you the proud memory of the sacrifice 
 which he made for you and his country, and 
 try to follow In his footsteps in doing your 
 full duty to his country and yours, both in 
 War and Peace. 
 
 " Wishing you a Merry Christmas and 
 Happy New Year, the kind he would want 
 you to have, 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " Leonard Wood, 
 '* Major General/* 
 
 It is small wonder that the man who 
 had it in him to write a letter so tender 
 and so full of human sympathy should 
 have won the devotion of his men and 
 been able, through that devotion, to 
 create an army that was a terrific fighting 
 
 lOI 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 machine and at the same time an organi- 
 zation of independent Americans of ini- 
 tiative and resource. He was their com- 
 mander, but he was, first of all, their 
 leader. They followed him with whole- 
 hearted enthusiasm because he had made 
 them understand that the way he was 
 going was the way that they, in 
 their best moments, themselves wanted 
 to go. 
 
 To Wood, the training of the 89th was 
 a great spiritual adventure to be crowned 
 when he led his Division over the top 
 under fire. In May, 1918, ^^ Wood's 
 Own," as they called themselves, were 
 transferred to Camp Mills to prepare 
 for embarkation. But it was as 
 " Wood's Orphans " that they sailed fof 
 France. 
 
 At the last moment. General Wood 
 had been relieved of his command and 
 ordered to San Francisco. 
 102 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 It was a tough blow. How tough it 
 was appears between the lines of his 
 farewell message: 
 
 " I will not say good-bye, but consider it 
 a temporary separation — at least I hope so. 
 I have worked hard with you and you have 
 done excellent work. I had hoped very much 
 to take you over to the other side. In fact, 
 I had no Intimation, direct or indirect, of any 
 change of orders until we reached here the 
 other night. The orders have been changed 
 and I am to go back to Funston. I leave for 
 that place to-morrow morning. I wish you 
 the best of luck and ask you to keep up the 
 high standard of conduct and work you have 
 maintained in the past. There's nothing to 
 be said. These orders stand; and the only 
 thing to do is to do the best we can — all of 
 us — to win the war. That is what we are 
 here for. That is what you have been 
 trained for. I shall follow your career with 
 the deepest Interest — with just as much in- 
 terest as if I were with you. Good luck; and 
 God bless you! " 
 
 103 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 In the face of public indignation the 
 order exiling him to idleness on the 
 Pacific Coast was rescinded and he was 
 ordered back to Camp Funston to train a 
 new Division, the loth. 
 
 He went at the work with the same 
 zeal with which he had undertaken the 
 training of the 89th. No shade of dis- 
 couragement weakened his spirit. He 
 gave himself to his new army as he had 
 given himself to the old, with all the 
 devotion, the alert watchfulness, the 
 solicitude, the appealing humanness that 
 he possessed. The men responded as the 
 others had responded, with even greater 
 zest, if anything. Their General had 
 had a " raw deal," they said. They were 
 " damned if they wouldn't make it up to 
 him." 
 
 The loth Division never reached the 
 fighting line to put their commander's 
 training to the ultimate test. But the 
 104 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 89th did. It went into the line in the 
 Toul sector in early August on a front of 
 sixteen kilometers with orders to gain all 
 possible information about the enemy 
 and hold the line while all the Divisions 
 massed behind for the attack on St.- 
 Mihiel. No identifications had been se- 
 cured in that sector for a month. The 
 89th went into the line without brigading 
 with French troops, dominated No Man's 
 Land and secured on an average one 
 identification a day. As the preparations 
 for the Allied attack developed the 
 enemy began vigorous patrols, then raids 
 by small groups, then raids by storm 
 troops in desperate attempts to secure 
 information. The 89th beat off every 
 attack, losing not a prisoner nor the body 
 of a single soldier that might offer evi- 
 dence for identification, but securing in- 
 formation itself from each assault of the 
 foe. For the great attack, the 89th be- 
 105 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 came the front-line Division. The ob- 
 jective was the key to the German posi- 
 tion, a concrete and wire fortification in 
 the Bois de Morte Mere, on which the 
 enemy had been working for four years, 
 and which the French had stormed in 
 vain again and again two years pre- 
 vious. 
 
 The 89th captured it on schedule, held 
 it, reorganized the front and remained 
 there, unrelieved, for a month. 
 
 " The report which has come to me 
 which has pleased me most," Wood 
 wrote to a friend, ^' has been that the 
 Division has never been late at an ob- 
 jective." 
 
 It never was. 
 
 In the Argonne the 89th fought des- 
 perately through the woods to the line for 
 the great attack of November first. Here 
 again its objective was the key to the 
 German position, the heights of Barri- 
 106 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 court. That night when Marshal Foch, 
 grave and taciturn, heard that the heights 
 had been taken, he said, " The war is 
 over." 
 
 But for ten days more the 89th fought 
 on across the Meuse. It was not the 
 enemy, only the Armistice that stopped 
 them at last. 
 
 Other able soldiers in succession com- 
 manded the Division, but in spirit it re- 
 mained '' Wood's Own." One night that 
 winter, in a small village on the Rhine, 
 a staff officer, turning a corner to light 
 a cigarette under the protection of the 
 overhanging eaves of a peasant's cottage, 
 found himself suddenly face to face with 
 what looked like an army. 
 
 "What outfit is this?" he asked. 
 
 The answer was quick and proud. 
 " This is a Kansas regiment! " 
 
 " Is it a good outfit? " 
 
 "Best in the army!" 
 107 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 "Why is that?" 
 
 " Bound to be, seeing who is our com- 
 mander back home. This is Wood's 
 Division 1 " 
 
 1 08 
 
WHILE Leonard Wood was preach- 
 ing preparedness, training civil- 
 ians to be officers when the need came, 
 and, out of mechanics, farmers and day- 
 laborers, shaping soldiers and organiz- 
 ing armies, the country he loved and 
 served was passing through an experience 
 in government that was as new to the 
 average hard-headed American as it was 
 bewildering; and as terrifying as it was 
 in some aspects comic. 
 
 The average American citizen has a 
 natural tendency to respect and trust the 
 Administration which a majority of his 
 fellow-citizens places in control of the 
 Federal government, even though he him- 
 self may not belong to that majority. 
 Once elected, the President becomes to a 
 109 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 certain extent dissociated in his mind 
 from the party which elected him, the 
 leader not only of Democrats or Repub- 
 licans, but of the whole American 
 people. He is inclined, even in parti- 
 san controversies, to give the President 
 the benefit of the doubt. He recognizes 
 the difficulties under which the Presi- 
 dent labors; he recognizes also the ex- 
 istence of sources of information open to 
 the President only, which give him the 
 right to demand that he be not judged 
 by superficial appearances. ^' Stand by 
 the President!" is a slogan that has a 
 firm hold on the American consciousness, 
 especially in matters relating to foreign 
 policy. It is an expression of the Ameri- 
 can's real love of fair play. When he 
 feels that this fundamental impulse has 
 been imposed upon, he has a way of 
 '^ seeing red." 
 The remarkable operations of the 
 no 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 mind of the Wilson Administration af- 
 fected the average American curiously. 
 At first he was puzzled. He saw the 
 Administration go to war with Mexico 
 and at the same moment proclaim its 
 friendly relations with that state; and 
 the situation struck him as odd. He 
 heard it condemn the German govern- 
 ment in a sharp note, threatening war if 
 certain things happened ; the things hap- 
 pened, and the Administration backed 
 out of its threat. 
 
 He began to get his bearings. 
 
 The Administration was against war 
 under any circumstances, he said to him- 
 self, and though he suspected that the 
 point of view was mistaken, he agreed 
 that there were arguments in its favor. 
 He heard the Administration shortly 
 after preach non-interference in the af- 
 fairs of small nations, and he acknowl- 
 edged certain merits in the doctrine; but 
 III 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 when the President promptly thereupon 
 landed marines in Santo Domingo to take 
 over the government of that unruly re- 
 public, he saw both pacifism and non- 
 interference go by the boards and became 
 bewildered. The Lusitania was sunk; 
 and in the exalted mood of the days that 
 followed, he would have struck the man 
 who criticized the President; but the 
 President said '''' Too proud to fight,^' 
 and his blood began to boil. The first 
 Lusitania note brought back the glow 
 of pride, but the second and third made 
 him, he did not know altogether why, 
 slightly ashamed. He was dimly aware 
 that some one was trying to prove to him 
 that the traditional way of handling dis- 
 agreements between nations was out of 
 date; that firmness and vigor were, in 
 some way that he did not quite under- 
 stand, immoral; and that the men who 
 advocated them were reactionary militar- 
 
 112 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 ists. Puzzled and unhappy, he wondered 
 whether he too were a reactionary; and 
 decided to keep an open mind. After a 
 while he seemed to see light. The Ad- 
 ministration was definitely pacifistic, he 
 said to himself. But suddenly, it was 
 calling for '' incomparably the greatest 
 navy in the world." In his joy at the 
 sudden appearance of masculinity in 
 what seemed to him the curiously femi- 
 nine reactions of the Administration he 
 did not object to a reversal of policy. A 
 few months later, to his astonishment, 
 the President was running for re-election 
 on the issue of peace-at-any-price, but a 
 month after his second inauguration the 
 country was at war. 
 
 The citizen who liked logic and con- 
 sistency in the conduct of public affairs 
 watched the performance with the dizzy 
 sensations of a recruit in the midst of 
 an aviation test. He heard the Adminis- 
 113 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 tration call on the very infants to ^' help 
 win the war " and refuse participation 
 to a human dynamo worth an army in 
 himself; he heard it preach democracy, 
 until men wearied of the word, and prac- 
 tise autocracy as ruthlessly as a czar; 
 preach co-operation and refuse to co- 
 operate; appeal for publicity and clear 
 thinking, and govern by smoke-screen or 
 by Aladdin's lamp. He heard the Ad- 
 ministration ask for a vote of confidence, 
 and proclaim its intention to abide by the 
 popular verdict; he saw the vote of con- 
 fidence refused by the people and heard 
 the Administration declare that it had the 
 country at its back. 
 
 The American of the old tradition felt 
 his head reel at the bewildering welter of 
 insincerities and contradictions and irides- 
 cent nebulosities through which the Ad- 
 ministration seemed to dodge back and 
 forth like a greased pig, too swift and 
 114 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 slippery for human hands to clutch. He 
 saw it reprove Japan in an ultimatum 
 that implied war, and without debate, 
 concur in Japan's desires; he saw it 
 defend China in words and betray her 
 in action; he saw it go to war with 
 Russia, a power with which it declared 
 itself to be at peace, and petulantly in- 
 sist on making peace with Bulgaria, a 
 power with which it had never been at 
 war. He heard it preach open diplo- 
 macy, with the air of Adam discovering 
 virtue, and saw it practise the ancient 
 ways of Machiavelli in a manner as 
 unashamed as it was inept. In America 
 he heard it prophesying world-disaster 
 if a comma of its treaty were removed; 
 in France, he heard the same voice 
 sauvely rejoicing over the changes 
 " which the publication of the treaty had 
 so fortunately brought forth." 
 
 Devious and strange beyond human 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 comprehending were the workings of the 
 Administration's intellectual processes to 
 the citizen who had been taught in a 
 school where two and two made neither 
 rabbits nor roc's eggs, but four. Like a 
 prestidigitator, diverting the attention 
 of his audience with a meaningless rig- 
 marole while he pretends to turn omelets 
 into singing-birds and silk hats into 
 Bengal tigers, he saw the Administration 
 play with the American people, relying 
 for success, it seemed, partly on the 
 swiftness with which, in the mad suc- 
 cession of events, the individual act is 
 blurred and forgotten, partly on that 
 fundamental principle of the profession 
 that " the hand is quicker than the eye." 
 He saw the Administration shake its 
 finger at labor and, behind a screen of 
 many words, yield to its demands; he 
 saw it shake its fist at the profiteers, and 
 behind a wall of newspaper headlines, 
 ii6 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 leave them unhampered to exact the last 
 drop of blood ; he heard it flatter the pub- 
 lic with unctuous phrases, and quietly 
 throw it to the wolves, since it possessed 
 no organization which needed to be pro- 
 pitiated. He heard it preach law and 
 order even while it flirted with the very- 
 elements that were undermining law and 
 order; and even while it fanned the 
 flames of anarchy he saw it turn and 
 annihilate the deluded anarchist. All 
 this he heard and saw, bathed in an at- 
 mosphere of moonshine and Sweet- 
 Sixteen-about-to-remake-the-world, veil- 
 ing a singular vindictiveness and untrust- 
 worthiness; a flea-like agility to shift 
 position just at the instant that annihila- 
 tion impends; a shrewd wariness, ex- 
 pressed in half-truths and half-measures 
 — the evil cause never more than half 
 opposed, the good cause never more than 
 half supported; a willingness to com- 
 117 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 promise on principles and unalterable 
 firmness only where personal pride was 
 involved. 
 
 The citizen who loved truth more than 
 self-delusion watched the strange tragi- 
 comedy, bitterly resentful at what 
 seemed the almost fatal departures from 
 American policy, the delays, the evasions, 
 the inability to face facts, which were 
 costing the nation thousands of lives and 
 billions of dollars; yet grimly amused 
 at the echoes of Gilbert and Sullivan 
 that dodged in and out among the tragic 
 chords. There seemed a cherubic dis- 
 regard for realities about the Adminis- 
 tration as fantastic as a pantomime; and 
 an elusiveness and intangibility about 
 its policies as heart-breaking as the with- 
 drawings and returnings, the prodigious 
 approaches and sudden dissolutions of 
 the shapeless figures of a fever-dream. 
 He bitterly resented the vague threats, 
 ii8 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 the vague promises, the vague intima- 
 tions of upheaval, the altogether vague 
 remedies which were disrupting labor, 
 distracting capital, making the whole 
 people restless and discontented, and 
 benefiting only the agitator and the 
 profiteer; but in his hottest resentment no 
 American with any laughter left in him 
 could altogether miss the gorgeous and 
 colossal humor in an appeal for self- 
 determination of all peoples and all ra- 
 cial groups abroad, by the leader of a 
 party whose dominance depended on the 
 rigid disfranchisement of the negro at 
 home; or the high comedy of a leader- 
 ship which fought one presidential cam- 
 paign in defense of America's solemn 
 duty to keep out of European quarrels, 
 and proposed to fight the next in defense 
 of her even solemner duty to get into 
 them. 
 Leonard Wood, doing his work at 
 119 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 Plattsburg and Governor's Island, at 
 Charleston and Camp Funston and Chi- 
 cago, was too good a soldier to comment 
 on the Administrative actions or inac- 
 tions of his superiors; but he v^as too 
 good an American citizen not to feel a 
 deep uneasiness at the unsteady course of 
 the Ship of State, the veering to and 
 fro, and the flapping of idle sails where 
 she lay in the wind, now and again jibing 
 violently, only to return to her dangerous 
 inertia, while the helmsman debated with 
 himself backward and forward whether 
 to lay her over to starboard or to port. 
 
 He said nothing; but the record of his 
 own administration in Cuba gives more 
 than a hint of the emotions that seethed 
 behind his tight-closed lips. It is not 
 difficult to guess what the man, whose 
 first act as Governor of Santiago was to 
 give unlimited freedom of criticism to 
 the press, thought of a censorship which 
 1 20 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 ideritified opposition to the Administra- 
 tion with treason against the government, 
 or what one, who had found his greatest 
 strength in open dealing and in careful 
 explanation of every step he had made, 
 thought of the Administration's deliber- 
 ate secretiveness and apparently studied 
 efforts to blur issues and confuse the 
 public mind. Wood, as governor, seek- 
 ing to reorganize the railroads of Cuba, 
 had chosen the two most experienced men 
 available in America and England to 
 supervise the work; revising the Cuban 
 code of law, he had turned for counsel to 
 the Chief Justice of the United States; 
 fighting yellow fever, he had called to 
 his assistance the wisest scientists he 
 could find. He knew that notable work 
 can be done only through notable men; 
 and it is not hard to imagine his reaction 
 to the timid reluctance to match minds 
 with the best, which laid the problems of 
 
 121 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 a dangerous war and a difficult peace 
 into the fumbling hands of mediocrities. 
 He knew from personal experience that 
 the business of government is like any- 
 other great business and must be organ- 
 ized by departments, under department 
 heads responsible to the general manager, 
 the President or governor as the case 
 may be. He knew that in the govern- 
 ment, as in industry, any attempt by the 
 executive to override the heads of de- 
 partments must end in administrative 
 chaos and that the machinery of govern- 
 ment can run smoothly only when the 
 executive appoints trustworthy subordi- 
 nates and trusts them to handle the work 
 allotted them. He knew that prosperity 
 and general well-being demand recipro- 
 cal confidence beween the government 
 and the public, expressed in open deal- 
 ings. He knew that questions involving 
 labor demand such open dealing above 
 
 122 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 all, even to the establishment of special 
 commissions for the purpose of investi- 
 gating disputes between employers and 
 employees and publishing their findings 
 for the information and instruction of 
 the public. He knew, from his own ex- 
 perience, not only in Cuba, but in the 
 Philippines and in the Army, that no dif- 
 ferences between individuals or organi- 
 zations are ever settled by concessions at 
 variance with justice; that the first es- 
 sential of any settlement is knowledge of 
 the facts involved, the second, mutual 
 trust, the third, firmness on fundamental 
 principles and a spirit of conciliation on 
 details. Knowing these things it is not 
 hard to guess how bitterly he resented the 
 Administration's uncertain and cloudy 
 relations both with capital and with 
 labor, the secret conferences, the hazy 
 admonitions, the impressive generaliza- 
 tions, the total lack, at critical moments, 
 123 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 of detailed plans and the consequent lack 
 of trust on the part of capital, labor and 
 the public in the government or any of 
 its works. 
 
 What Wood was thinking during these 
 years of vacillation and mental confusion 
 remains Wood's secret. He did not 
 speak. He did not have to. Roosevelt 
 was alive. 
 
 Roosevelt's death brought him a 
 double shock. They had been warm and 
 intimate friends, who had stood side 
 by side in the two great adventures of 
 their lives, the romance of the war with 
 Spain and the glory of that graver war- 
 fare when they fought the inertia of a 
 people lulled into forgetfulness of duty; 
 and forced a hostile Administration to 
 take the course which they laid down. 
 They were both great fighters, both 
 " clean as a hound's tooth," both most 
 human in their wide sympathies with all 
 124 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 manner of men, eager for counsel and 
 quick and steady in judgment; above all, 
 both masculine-minded, having the cour- 
 age to tell the unpopular truth. When 
 Roosevelt died, it v^as Wood's battle- 
 partner that went. 
 
 But Roosevelt's death brought to 
 Wood a shock besides the shock of per- 
 sonal loss. He found the eyes of thou- 
 sands who had looked to '^ the Colonel " 
 for leadership now fixed on himself. 
 
 "We run with the torches until we 
 fall," Roosevelt had said, '^ content if we 
 can then pass them to the hands of other 
 runners." 
 
 Gradually, as month has succeeded 
 month and the Presidential election has 
 drawn near. Wood has become the focus 
 of the hopes of an increasing number of 
 men and women scattered over the coun- 
 try who have found in him a symbol 
 of that blunt belief in facts, that respect 
 125 
 
Leonard Wood 
 
 for training and experience, that love 
 of open dealing, which the Administra- 
 tion has offended, and that traditional 
 Americanism which in subtle ways it 
 has sought to set aside as old-fashioned. 
 It is not strange that countless Americans, 
 angered at the lack of these qualities in 
 the Administration, should seek to make 
 the man who most patently possesses 
 them, the instrument of their indignation. 
 
 402 
 
 126 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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