GENERAL WOOD
June 15, 1918
Senator Hiram Johnson has rendered many notable services to the public, and among them is hisrecent speech concerning the cruel injustice with which Major-General Leonard Wood has been treated and the very grave damage thereby done the army and the Allied cause at this critical moment of the war.
General Wood’s entire offense consists in his having, before the war, continually advocated our doing things which now every one in his senses admits ought to have been done. Nine tenths of wisdom consists of being wise in time. General Wood was wise in time. Moreover, by twenty years of hard, practical work, he fitted himself to do peculiarly well in this very crisis. He was our senior general in rank, he was recognized by the best French and English military authorities as by experience trained to play an immediate and important part in the difficult and perilous joint work of the war. He had testified at length and with exhaustive professional knowledge before the congressional military committees, one year and two years prior to our entry into the war, pointing out all the military lacks, which experience has since shown to exist and which the War Department then denied existed. He is to be credited with the only piece of serious military preparedness in advance which is to our credit. In the service of 1915, in the teeth of indifference and hostility from his superiors, he created the Plattsburg officers’ reserve training camp, starting the system of training camps which has enabled us to officer our draft army.
He is in splendid physical condition. Recentlywhen in France he was severely wounded by a shell burst, and the surgeons reported his recovery as being more rapid than would have been the case with the average young man of robust bodily health and vigor. He has done excellent work in training his men at Camp Funston. He has been unwearied in looking after the health and welfare of his men. He has been rewarded by their loyal devotion; they have been profoundly grieved and moved by having him suddenly taken from them. The refusal to use his great ability and energy means a distinct subtraction from the sum total of our military efficiency, a distinct addition to the risk from disease and discomfort which some of our men at the front will have to incur, and a distinct benefit to the cause of Germany.
No explanation has been given the American people for the action concerning him. Nothing has been made public which warrants our belief that this action was due either to professional or to patriotic considerations.