{124}
This bishop was elevated from priesthood while Wood was governor and because of his affection and respect for the American officer he asked him to walk with him daring the ceremonious procession from the priest's little parish church, where he had served, to the old cathedral where he was to officiate thereafter. It was a solemn religious function and has been described, because of the terrific surroundings of the hour, as not unlike the ceremony which took place in Milan after the Great Plague.
The entire population of the city with some forty or fifty thousand from the surrounding hills packed the streets along the route of the procession. None of them had had a blessing from his own Cuban clergy in many years. It was like a mediaeval scene. The old bishop bowed by years, weakened by his recent grief at the suffering of his people and by the excitement of the moment, and General Wood, the American Protestant, walked together under the bishop's canopy. The people in the streets, seeing this, cried: "Thank God, the General is a Catholic! We didn't know it!"
{125}
From time to time the old bishop, tired with the exertion of swinging the censer with the holy water, would hand it to Wood and ask him to continue the function by his side until he could secure a slight respite. Occasionally as he leaned forward to bless the thousands who lined the way and who had come to feel his touch and kiss his hand his miter would slip to one side on his head and the unperturbed American general would lean forward and straighten it for him. Each time the old bishop turned to him and murmured, "Thank God, you are here! I am so old that I could not have made this journey, if you had not been here to help me."
Wood told him that he was not a Catholic, that indeed from Bishop Bernaba's point of view he was a heretic and bound for Hell.
"No," said the bishop, with a smile, "you are a good Catholic; only you do not know it."
Small wonder that when he left Santiago in the spring of 1899 to visit the United States Wood was presented by the people of the city with a magnificent hand-work scroll which said in Spanish:
{126}
"The people of the City of Santiago de Cuba to General Leonard Wood ... the greatest of all your successes is to have won the confidence and esteem of a people in trouble."
Small wonder that in December, 1899, less than a year after the United States took over the island, he was appointed by President McKinley Governor General of Cuba and made a Major General of United States Volunteers!
{127}
{128}
{129}
It has been said that General Wood's work in Havana as Governor-General of Cuba was the continuation of his work at Santiago on a larger scale. This would seem to be erroneous.
The Santiago problem was the cleaning and reorganizing of a city of 60,000 inhabitants. Many stringent measures could properly be put into operation in such a community which were quite impossible in a city of 350,000 inhabitants like Havana, or in a state of two and one-half million people such as the Island of Cuba. It was possible in an epidemic to close up houses temporarily, stop business and commercial intercourse for a period where only 60,000 people were concerned. But to stop the daily commerce of a large city, the capital of a state, was out of the question.
Furthermore the problem in the first instance was one of organizing a community in so {130} deplorable a condition that it was on the verge of anarchy. In the second instance much of the cleaning-up process had been at least begun by other American officers. It was here in Havana a case of administration and statecraft as against organization.
It was the taking of a crown colony of Spain--a kingdom--which had never been anything but a royal colony, and turning it in two years and a half into a republic, self-governed, self-judged, self-administered and self-supporting.
Roughly speaking, there had never been such a case. Even now the proposal of the Philippine Islands would practically be the second case should independence be granted to them by the United States. In all history a colony, once a colony, either has remained so, or has revolted from the mother country and by force of arms established its own independence.
These two problems, then, were quite different in their essential elements and they required different qualities in the man who settled them.
President McKinley's instructions to the new Governor-General were "To prepare Cuba, as {131} rapidly as possible, for the establishment of an independent government, republican in form, and a good school system." And both the President and the Secretary of War left their representative entirely to his own resources to work this out. His work was laid out for him and he was given a free hand.
General Wood, therefore, in December, 1899, after having been received with a magnificent ovation on his return to the United States, made a Major-General and given an LL.D. degree by his own University of Harvard--after having returned to Santiago suddenly upon the outbreak of yellow fever, cleaned the town, covered it with chloride of lime, soaked it with corrosive sublimate, burned out its sewers and cesspools, and checked the epidemic,--finally took up his residence in Havana and began his work.
One can readily imagine the immediate problems all of which needed settlement at once, none of which could be settled without study of the most thorough and vital sort. Wood's method was that of an administrator and statesman of great vision. He immediately proceeded to {132} secure wherever he could find them the best men on each of the problems and set them to work with such assistance, expert and otherwise, as they required to make reports to him within a limited time as to what should be done in their particular branches of the government.
Again, it was so simple that it can be told in words of one syllable. But the great administrator appeared in the selection of the men for the jobs and in the final acceptance, rejection, or modification of the plans proposed. While he was an absolute monarch of the Island he never exerted that authority unless there was no other possible course. In all cases he left decisions in so far as that could be done to native bodies and native representatives and native courts with full authority.
Chief Justice White of the Supreme Court upon being consulted told him that in the main the laws were sound but that the procedure was faulty; that he must look closely to this and make many modifications. This hint from a great authority became his guide.
The most crying needs of the moment were the {133} courts and the prisons. Prisoners were held without cause; trials were a farce; the prisons themselves were filthy places where all ages were herded together; court houses were out of repair and out of use; records hardly existed, and the whole machinery of justice was that of a decayed colony of a decayed kingdom totally without the respect of the public and without self-respect.
General Wood began with characteristic promptness to get to the root of the matter. The principal officer charged with the prosecution of cases was removed and a mixed commission, selected and appointed by himself, substituted. As a result in a short time six hundred prisoners were freed, because there was not sufficient evidence against them to warrant their arrests. Court houses were put into repair. Judges with fixed and sufficient salaries were appointed; officials were set at work upon salaries that were fair and--what is far more to the point--were regularly paid. Prison commissions appointed by Wood examined conditions and the prisons were cleaned, moved to other buildings, or renovated and remodelled according to modern American methods. {134} The result in less than six months was that native officials were conducting this work in a self-respecting, honorable manner, convicting or releasing prisoners in short order and bringing the idea of justice into respect in the public mind. The establishment of order was a natural result. Outbreaks and riots became unknown. The people began to realize as no amount of exhibition of power on the part of the invaders could ever have made them realize that peace, order, fair play, and a chance to live had come upon the land in what seemed some miraculous fashion.
The respect of the individual for the State was born again in the Cuban mind--born, perhaps it is fairer to say, for the first time in the heart of this much abused and ignorant people. Once this really pierced their inner consciousness--the inner consciousness of the whole people, of everybody poor or rich--these people felt safe and secure and knew they could take up their enterprises with safety and with hope of adequate returns which should belong to themselves.
It was so sound to do this wherever possible through the medium of the Cubans themselves and {135} not through army officials! It was so sane and clear-visioned a method to begin with this great beam of the remodeled Cuban house--this building up by the process of individual observation of confidence in those who ruled them!--and the men whom General Wood selected to draw the plans were experts in just such work. He selected them. He passed on their schemes. They did the work. And to this day he gives them credit for the whole thing.
Next came the necessity for inculcating the idea of government of the people by the people. Six months after taking office General Wood had appointed a commission on a general election law, had adopted a plan much after our own electoral laws with the Australian ballot system and a limited suffrage, had prepared in his own office in Havana all the ballots, ballot boxes, circulars describing election rules and had successfully held throughout Cuba the first real election ever known on the island--ever known to the people. Municipal officials and local representatives were chosen everywhere by the people themselves for the first time in their lives.
{136}
Whether such a thing would be successful and prove effective the Governor-General did not know. But he knew that it was the right thing to do if they were ever to govern themselves; he trusted them--and he took the risk.
Next--or rather at the same time with these two basic lines of constructive building--came the school system. When the United States took over the Island the school system was non-existent. There was not one single schoolhouse belonging to the State anywhere on the Island. There were no schools at all except private and church schools and very few of them. Children in the mass did not attend school. There was no foundation to build on. The whole school system had to be created new from the bottom to the top. That schools were another of the main beams of this new house is self-evident. Yet the action taken was much more far-seeing than would have been possible without a single autocrat to decree, and without a man who could see many years ahead.
"I knew," said the Governor-General in one of his reports, "that we were going to establish a {137} government of and by the people in Cuba and that it was going to be transferred to them at the earliest possible moment; and I believed that the success of the future government would depend as much upon the foundation and extension of its public schools as upon any other factor, that such a system must be entirely in the hands of the people of the island."
This was the situation when in the beginning of 1900 within a month after taking office Wood selected a young West Pointer who had been a teacher to draw up a school system and school laws. The result was an adaptation of the Ohio and Massachusetts School Systems; and when in 1902 the Island was turned over to the Cubans three thousand eight hundred schools were in operation in good schoolhouses, with native teachers well paid, with 256,000 pupils, and at an expenditure of $4,000,000 a year out of a total annual state revenue of $17,000,000. In other words nearly one-quarter of the Island's revenue had been spent on the education of children to make them good and self-respecting citizens where nothing whatever had been spent before.
{138}
It was a very bold step. No other country on earth had ever spent so large a portion of its revenue on education. The appropriations in the United States to-day are pitiful in comparison--and yet our country is supposed to be doing pretty well by its future citizens. Again the step taken by the Governor-General was a piece of construction of the main essentials--of the things that make no show, but build, always build.
American teachers were not employed, in order that the Cubans filled with suspicion of what the invaders were going to do might not be led to believe that there was any attempt being made to "Americanize" the Island. But on the other hand in the summer of 1900 one thousand of these new Cuban teachers were invited with all their expenses paid to spend several months at Harvard University in Cambridge and learn something of American pedagogy. The preparations for transporting this large number and handling them during their stay in the United States involved a large amount of work, but the trip was carried through without mishap or accident of any kind, and the thousand teachers returned to {139} their homes in the Island not only with the great benefit resulting from this instruction, but with the immense stimulus of a visit to an organized and comparatively smoothly running civilization. What they saw was of even greater benefit to them in the long run than what they learned in their summer courses.
At this time the city of Havana was a fever-ridden, dangerous city. Yellow fever and other tropical diseases existed always and blazed up into epidemics at certain seasons of the year. Such systems of drainage as existed emptied into the harbor or into the street gutters. A beginning had been made to cleanse the city before Wood took charge, but little had been done in the smaller cities of the Island, all of which were in somewhat the same condition as Santiago in 1898 except for the added scourge in the latter city resulting from its siege.
Nevertheless different methods had to be used in Havana. It is impossible here to go into the mass of detail in the appointing of commissions to carry out the different sanitary works that were required in Havana and all over the Island {140} in cities, towns and country districts. But, familiar as it now is, there will never be an account of this work which has made Cuba one of the healthiest places to live in either in or out of the tropics--there will never be a description so short that it cannot tell of the work of the unselfish, altruistic group of physicians who solved the yellow fever problem for all time. It gives him who writes even now something of a thrill to tell a little of it again and to pay tribute to the man who organized the work and to the men who carried it out under his unfailing support and encouragement. It is the greatest achievement of medicine since the discovery of the smallpox vaccine. It is one of the bright spots in the history of mankind.
Here it is told best by the organizer of it in his official language with all the reserve and reticence that go with all the writing he has ever issued. Between the lines one reads the story of a hundred cases of bravery as great as that required by any fighter in the world, a hundred instances of self-sacrifice and risk willingly given in those fever-stricken places and quarantined hospitals, freely {141} offered that those who came after might be saved from the black cloud which then hung over all tropical and semi-tropical countries.
In the Spring and summer of 1900 a yellow fever epidemic broke out in Havana and in many parts of the Island. All the sanitary methods known to man seemed to have no effect upon it. Nothing seemed to do much good.
At this point General Wood, knowing of the theory of Dr. Findlay that yellow fever was transmitted by the bite of a mosquito and at his wits' end to know what step to take next, received notice that a commission consisting of Drs. Reed, Carroll and Lazaer had been appointed to make a thorough study of the disease at first hand and report to him. "After several preliminary investigations Dr. Lazaer submitted himself as a subject for an experiment for the purpose of demonstrating that the yellow fever could be transmitted in this way. He was inoculated with an infected mosquito, took the fever and died. Dr. Carroll was also bitten and had a serious case of yellow fever, but fortunately recovered.
"The foregoing was the situation when Doctors {142} Reed, Carroll and Kean called at headquarters and stated that they believed the point had been reached where it was necessary to make a number of experiments on human beings and that they wanted money to pay those who were willing to submit themselves to these experiments and they needed authority to make experiments. They were informed that whatever money was required would be made available, and that the military Governor would assume the responsibility for the experiments. They were cautioned to make these experiments only on sound persons, and not until they had been made to distinctly understand the purpose of the same and especially the risk they assumed in submitting themselves as subjects for these experiments, and to always secure the written consent of the subjects who offered themselves for this purpose. It was further stipulated that all subjects should be of full legal age. With this understanding, the work was undertaken in a careful and systematic manner. A large number of experiments were made.
"The Stegomyia mosquito was found to be beyond question the means of transmitting the {143} yellow fever germ. This mosquito, in order to become infected, must bite a person sick with the yellow fever during the first five days of the disease. It then requires approximately ten days for the germs so to develop that the mosquito can transmit the disease, and all non-immunes who are bitten by a mosquito of the class mentioned, infected as described, invariably develop a pronounced case of yellow fever in from three-and-one-half to five days from the time they are bitten. It was further demonstrated that infection from cases so produced could be again transmitted by the above described type of mosquito to another person who would, in turn, become infected with the fever. It was also proved that yellow fever could be transmitted by means of introduction into the circulation of blood serum even after filtering through porcelain filters, which latter experiment indicates that the organism is exceedingly small, so small, in fact, that it is probably beyond the power of any microscope at present in use. It was positively demonstrated that yellow fever could not be transmitted by clothing, letters, etc., and that, consequently all the old {144} methods of fumigation and disinfection were only useful so far as they served to destroy mosquitoes, their young and their eggs." [Footnote: General Wood's Report on the military government of Cuba.]
That is the story of a work that has made Cuba a healthy land, that has freed the southern part of the United States forever from the dread disease, that has made the building of the Panama Canal a possibility and the Canal Zone healthier in death rate per thousand than New York City, that has finally rid the earth of yellow fever as vaccine rid it of smallpox and typhoid, and as the discoveries during the Great War have made it possible to check tetanus and typhus and bubonic plague.
It was done--the work was done--by the doctors named and their assistants and the many men who took up the burden in other places and carried on. All honor to them! But the man who approved the idea, who took the risk and the responsibility and backed up those who worked-- the man who kept in touch with it day by day and {145} saw that it was carried through--was Leonard Wood.
Simultaneously with these basic administrative activities many other lines of constructive state building were inaugurated, under the same administrative plan--the plan of the appointment of a specialist or a commission of specialists to draw up plans and report to the Governor-General who then decided and started the actual work of reorganization.
A railroad law was written, and General Wood persuaded General Grenville M. Dodge and Sir William Van Horn to help him to build much of the present railway system of Cuba. Hard modern roads took the place of the muddy routes almost impassable at certain seasons of the year which had been the only means of communication throughout the island. Hospitals and charities were grouped under a new organization consisting almost entirely of Cubans which renovated old hospitals, built new ones, put children first into temporary homes and then did away practically with asylums as soon as the destitute children could be put out among the Cuban families who {146} took them under a newly made law. Thus, in so far as was possible, no child from that time forward grew up with the stigma of an orphan asylum resting upon him or her, but had the chance offered to become in time a self-respecting inhabitant of a self-respecting community.
Immense sums were disbursed by the military government in public works, harbor improvements, lighthouses which had almost ceased to exist, post offices and postal systems, telephone and telegraph connections, offices and organizations and an entirely new system of custom houses and quarantine administrations.
The account of these in detail is the same story over and over again--the building of a state from bottom to top; and the administration of this state by those people who throughout their entire lives had known nothing of the sort--much less had any voice in its management.
Two require special notice because of the tact and judgment required in handling them and because of the vital importance their consummation meant in the final settlement of Cuban difficulties.
One was the ending of the long standing war {147} between the Spanish Government and the Roman Catholic Church upon the question of church property appropriated by Spain. No settlement had been made since the concordat of 1861. And when General Wood took command of the Island the Church came to him and said: "What is the United States going to do? Is it war, or peace? Give us our property back, or pay us for the use of it."
With infinite wisdom and tact the Governor-General appointed judicial commissions to make an exhaustive study of the situation which resulted in reports showing that the claims of the Church were in the main just and fair, and a settlement was reached by which the State purchased most of the property, and rented for five years the rest, so that time should be given for equitable adjustment. This settled for all time a century-old trouble which alone would have made the setting up of a peaceable and effective government doubtful.
The other sound reorganization of a delicate nature was the action of the Governor-General in revising a law which made marriages only legal if {148} performed by a judge and ignoring the church ceremony altogether. The changed law recognized either church or civil marriage and quieted the most serious of all family troubles in the Island.
Finally a constitutional convention was planned and held, at which a constitution of the republican form based upon that of the United States was framed and adopted; an electoral law for elections in the Cuban republic was also adopted; and the general administrative law of the land was rewritten and adapted so that the government of the Island could be turned over to its inhabitants in workable form even though that form was new to them and they new to self-government in any form.
Look for a moment at the result of this work. In December, 1899, Leonard Wood took command of the Island of Cuba. In May, 1902, he turned over that Island to its own inhabitants. In 1899 except for the military work done by the American Army the Island contained Spaniards who had for years been its autocratic rulers and who had recently been defeated in a war; and Cubans who {149} had for years been governed by a tyrant race. In 1902 these two century-old hostile groups, neither of whom had ever had any real experience in modern representative government, received their country at the hands of the Americans with new laws, with a republican form of government, with their own kind for rulers elected by their own people, and began an existence that has now been running long enough to prove that the work was so well performed for them as to make the impossible possible--the rotten kingdom, a clean republic; the decayed colony, an independent, proud democracy.
It is a piece of work unparalleled in the annals of history. And the closing episodes which occurred in Havana are a witness to the affection and pride in which the people held the man who had accomplished it, the nation which had ordered it and their Island which was the scene of its happening.
One typical episode occurred on the night of President Palma's inauguration ball given to the new President and the new Cuban Congress by General Wood. Wood took a number of the {150} principal representatives of the new Cuban Congress to the Spanish Club--the hotbed of the Spanishrégime--where there was a celebration in progress in honor of King Alfonso's birthday. The two nationalities fraternized at once under the influence of the American Governor-General, and all of them, Spaniards and Cubans, drank the health of the King of Spain. The President and the principal members of the Club then joined the party and went to the ball together, where in turn all of them, Spaniards and Cubans alike, drank the health of the new republic. When Wood's family left for Spain the Spanish colony in Havana made a request that they should sail on the Spanish Royal Mail Steamer in order that they might show their appreciation of his work. And this ship when she sailed was the first Spanish boat to salute the brand new Cuban flag which had just been raised at the entrance to the harbor where for 400 years before that day the flag of Spain had waved.
Another witness to the singular skill with which the Governor-General handled the diplomatic relations of the republic, and which is probably {151} unequaled anywhere in history, follows. This witness has to do with his work in laying the foundations of peace between the government of the Island and the Catholic Church. It is only possible here to quote from a few of the documents which Wood received not only as acknowledgment of his wise and sane policy, but as voluntary signs of personal affection and respect which the writers held for him when his difficult task was done. Monsignor Donatus, Bishop of Havana, wrote among other letters three which deserve quoting here. They were all voluntary expressions on his part. The first, dated at Havana on August 10, 1900, says in part:
"To His Excellency, Major-General Leonard Wood, U.S.A., Military Governor of Cuba. Honored Sir:
"I saw published in the official Gazetta yesterday the decree whereby you give civil effects and validity to religious marriages. This act of your Excellency corresponds perfectly with the elevated ideals of justice, fairness and true liberty to which aspired the institutions and government of {152} the United States, which you so worthily represent in this Island.
"I gladly take this opportunity of declaring that in all my dealings with your Excellency I have found you ever disposed to listen to all reasonable petitions and to guard the sacred rights of justice which is the firmest foundation of every honored and noble nation.
"I am moved, therefore, to speak the thanks not only of the Catholics but likewise of all others who truly love the moral, religious and political well-being of the people, and to express to your Excellency the sincere feelings and satisfaction and gratitude for this decree, which is worthy of a wise leader and an able statesman. This too gives me confidence that all your decrees and orders will continue to be dictated by the same high-minded and liberal spirit of justice that while it respects the religious sentiment, also guarantees and defends the rights and liberties of all honest institutions. Very respectfully yours, X. Donatus, Bishop of Havana."
The second from the same place, dated December 11, 1900, says:
{153}
"All lovers of liberty of conscience, all guardians of the sanctity of the home and all who understand and admire good citizenship must recognize in this as in your other order on the same subject, the wisdom of a far-seeing statesman and the courage of a fearless executive.
"Thanking you therefore in my own name and in the name of the Church I represent, I remain with every sentiment of respect and esteem, Very sincerely yours, X. Donatus, Bishop of Havana."
And finally as the Bishop was leaving Havana in November, 1901, to become the Bishop of Ephesus and proceed to Rome, he wrote:
"Called by the confidence of the Holy Father to a larger and more difficult field of action, I feel the duty before leaving Cuba to express to your Excellency my sentiment of friendship and gratitude, not only for the kindness shown to me, but for the fair treatment of the questions with the Government of the Island, especially the Marriage and Church Property questions. The equity and justice which inspired your decisions will devolve before all fair-minded people to the honor, not {154} only of you personally, but also to the Government you so worthily represent. I am gratified to tell you that I have already expressed the same sentiment to the Holy Father in writing and I will tell him orally on my visit to Rome. Yours very respectfully, X. Donatus, Bishop of Havana."
An interesting result of this work of Wood's in regard to the settlement of the religious questions of the Island came later on when he was starting on his way to take up his work in the Philippines in the form of a delegation of Church authorities headed by Archbishop Jones. This delegation came to General Wood to say that its members proposed to approach the President of the United States and suggest that Wood be given the same authority to represent church matters in the Philippines as he had had in Cuba. They added that if this were done, they would give him full power to represent the Catholic Church as a referee and confer upon him the power not only to recommend action in all matters, but to settle all matters for the Church himself.
It is very doubtful if such authority has many times in history been given to a Protestant by the {155} Church of Rome, and it marks the extraordinary height to which Wood's ability had lifted him in the world at large.
It is hardly to be wondered at that Theodore Roosevelt wrote at the time: "Leonard Wood four years ago went down to Cuba, has served there ever since, has rendered services to that country of the kind which if performed three thousand years ago would have made him a hero mixed up with the sun god in various ways; a man who devoted his whole life through those four years, who thought of nothing else, did nothing else, save to try to bring up the standard of political and social life in that Island, to teach the people after four centuries of misrule that there were such things as governmental righteousness and honesty and fair play for all men on their merits as men." [Footnote:Harvard Graduates' Magazine.]
{156}
{157}
{158}
{159}
Meantime, while Wood was carrying on his work in Cuba, events of importance to him and to his country were taking place in the United States. The popularity of his war record had made Roosevelt Governor of New York, and when the time came for him to run for a second term the Republican organization of the state forced him to take the nomination for Vice-President of the United States in order to keep him out of the gubernatorial field. He objected strongly and tried to remain in the state fight, but at the convention in Philadelphia upon a certain momentous occasion Thomas Platt, then head, of the state and national Republican organization, is said to have remarked to him:
"Mr. Roosevelt, if you do not desire the vice-presidential nomination, there is always the alternative of retirement to private life."
In other words party machinery was too strong {160} for him and much against his will he was forced to run as second on the McKinley-Roosevelt presidential ticket.
The Republicans were successful and Roosevelt, knowing that there was little for him to do in Washington, was planning an extended trip through the Southern states to make an exhaustive study of the negro question. He had indeed begun to accumulate material on this subject when on September 6, 1901, McKinley was shot at Buffalo. A few days later he died; and Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States.
For Wood this meant much in the future--much of good and something of trouble. Roosevelt was his devoted friend and supporter, and upon his return to the United States in early 1902 he found this devoted friend the head of the nation, himself a Brigadier-General of the regular army scheduled to go into regular army work and to live on an army officer's pay. In this country there is no other procedure possible. In England such a man would have been given a title and a large sum of money to make it possible for him to keep up the position which a man of his abilities and {161} attainments should keep up. Here the case is different.
He had the alternative of going on, or retiring and entering commercial pursuits. Offers looking towards the latter contingency were not wanting. He was, in fact, asked to take a business position, which offered him forty thousand a year. Here was a large income for a man of forty-two, regular work of an interesting sort, security and a clear future for himself and his family. Instead, he accepted the appointment to the Philippines which meant and indeed, as the outcome showed, actually involved more than a hundred military engagements amongst the natives of the islands in many of which he risked his life.
Here again he took the road of service to his country as he had each time the ways divided since the day when as a young doctor he entered the army. No one but he himself can tell in detail just the reasons which led to this decision, but in the main they were the instinctive desire for action, for execution and for the open road, which then as now swayed him in all his actions and decisions. Then, too, he felt that since {162} Roosevelt was President, criticisms of their relations in political circles might readily arise, as indeed did occur later; and lest their friendship should be misunderstood he took the Philippine appointment--applied for it, even--in order that being thus out of the country, cause for any such occurrences might perhaps be avoided.
It is always interesting to look back through the career of such a man and speculate on the chance or wise decision which caused the choice of the right road or the left road at such a time. Neither Wood nor Roosevelt could possibly know or foresee that this decision would furnish the former with the material which eventually led to his doing more than all the rest of the United States put together to start preparation for the Great War. Neither of them could have guessed that his administration in the Philippines would bring out further qualities in Wood which showed the statesman as well as the administrator in him.
What might have happened otherwise is again a futile speculation--perhaps something to bring him still more before the people of his country, perhaps less--yet it may be safely said, judging {163} from history and biography the world over, that it is probable no road he might have taken would have suppressed Leonard Wood's executive and administrative qualities. Indeed the fact that for practically thirty years he has been in the army, that he is a soldier in every inch of his big body, has never even to this day made him a militarist. He is and always has been an administrator; and that quality with all that it means would in all likelihood have cropped out in whatever profession he might have chosen or been forced into by circumstances.
Men of ability are doubtless occasionally kept down; but not as a rule. They rise to the occasion. And conversely men of small minds, dreamers and theorists looking to the settlement of all problems on the instant seldom last long at the top although they rise to prominence here and there in times of excitement and hysteria such as we are passing through to-day. It is only the sound common sense of humanity coupled with great ability that stands the test. It is only they who keep ever before them the fact that {164} elemental laws do not change, cannot be changed, who stand the test and strain of emergency.
The entire world since the Great War is filled with new theories, new plans, new outlooks for all of us. We cannot go back to the old status. Yet because we cannot go back there would seem to be no reason for our going mad. The wall paper has changed--must change. New decorations with wonderful and to American ears unpronounceable names have been displayed before the eyes of Europe and America by the advanced architects of the day. But that individual--not to mention nations--who becomes fascinated with the new colors and designs will suffer horribly in the end if, having forgotten to look to the beams of his house, he finds it shortly tumbling about his ears. Sane vision, clear thinking at critical times has saved and will save many times again those who would fall but for such guidance.
To-day in this land such men are needed. They must come forward, not in haste or with sudden panaceas, but with the same old sound common sense which has made us what we are and will keep {165} us from becoming what parts of the rest of the world have already become.
In 1902 the situation, while not as acute as to-day, had nevertheless its problems to be solved; and though we had just finished what in the light of history was a short and almost insignificant war the country was startled from end to end by the discovery of its unpreparedness. As has already been said our amazing lack of men and equipment for any such occasion had been impressed upon Wood's mind by personal experience and by his own native instinct for the reverse.
It was of great interest to him, therefore, to receive shortly the appointment to visit Germany as an American military observer of the German Army maneuvers. And out of this trip he learned more thoroughly the lack of foresight in military matters in this country and saw more clearly the position which we should be in, if such a machine as the German Army were pitted against us instead of the weak and decayed forces of Spain.
In the course of these maneuvers he met many of the greatest military men of Europe. He was received and entertained by the German Emperor {166} not only because of his position in the American army and as the representative of the United States, but as the man who in Cuba had treated with such kindness and courtesy German officers of a visiting training ship who were ill with the Island fevers. He witnessed the grand maneuvers of the greatest army the world has ever known. But, what in his own belief was of far more importance, he met and talked with European military experts of world-wide reputation.
Among these men the most congenial spirit was Lord Roberts. The little man of Kandahar, the great fighter of Britain's battles, the idol of the British public, was then striving to awaken the English people and the English government to their own unpreparedness. He sought even then to show them what an attack by a force like the German Army would mean to the British Empire. For years he kept at it, lecturing, speaking, crying aloud throughout England up to the very day when without warning in 1914 his countrymen found themselves with a scant two hundred thousand soldiers confronted by five millions of trained Germans.
{167}
The great fighter, the great preacher, his little body filled with patriotism and a great heart, unbosomed to Wood and met a responsive assent in Wood's own nature. They discussed from all sides the right thing to do. They went over all the European systems together with the desire in their hearts to find something which should at the same time give a nation a force of great size that could be quickly put into action and still not turn that nation into a huge military machine. Neither of them was a militarist. Both felt that peace was best preserved by the power to preserve it.
Together they seem to have arrived at some adaptation of the Swiss system which provides that small country with a relatively enormous military force without causing the citizens to give up their commercial pursuits. At that time it is probable that Wood began to formulate the idea of universal military training of all male citizens between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one while they were finishing school and college and before they had settled upon their life work.
At all events the material upon the subject {168} which he managed to accumulate in the way of books, pamphlets, records and so on constitutes now one of the main portions of his extensive library. And the whole trip was an example in his case of what a man can do incidentally--or apparently incidentally--while occupied ostensibly with some other work. During his stay in Europe he met many statesmen in Germany, France and England and absorbed from them all he could on the subject that was fast becoming his greatest interest.
Upon his return to the United States the difficulties which Taft, the Governor of the Philippine Islands, was having in trying to bring order amongst the Moro, or Moslem, Islands and the half savage tribes which inhabited them led President Roosevelt to consider the advisability of sending some one to undertake this difficult and dangerous task. Speaking of it to Wood one day the latter said:
"Why not send me?"
Roosevelt immediately referred him to Mr. Root, then Secretary of War, with the result that he was appointed Governor of Moro Province to do {169} the work there amongst these new wards of the United States under different conditions which he had already done in Cuba.
Wood felt very strongly that it would be far better for him to be there during the administration of Roosevelt in order that their personal relationship might not be misunderstood. This was the more forcibly brought in upon his consciousness by the occurrence at that time of what is known as the Rathbone affair.
Major Estes G. Rathbone, formerly an assistant postmaster-general and at this time detailed to duties in the newly organized Post Office in Cuba, had been charged with wastefulness of public moneys and unwarranted expenditure of public funds for personal expenses. He, with certain associates, was brought to trial and convicted. He was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. It was one of the few cases of malfeasance in office which occurred in Cuba during Wood's administration and was dealt with by the regular courts in the regular manner.
Nothing further would have come of it in all probability had not the extraordinarily close {170} relations of Wood and Roosevelt furnished an excuse. The fact that Roosevelt was President of the United States and that as such he proposed the name of Wood for advancement to Major-General of Regulars from Brigadier-General added fuel to the flames. The fact that Wood was the senior Brigadier and that as such he would naturally become Major-General in regular seniority seems to have carried no weight at the time. Even then the Rathbone affair would have had no connection with the matter of this appointment had not Major Rathbone possessed personal friends high politically in the government of the time, and had not the regular army officers looked with disfavor upon the appointment even in regular order of a man who had been an army surgeon and who was not what is known as a line officer originally.
All these influences, however, coming together at the same time caused an uproar in Congress over his appointment which, while it cleared Wood entirely, still made a political scandal that hurt to the quick the man who had just accomplished what he had accomplished in Cuba.
Wood was charged with conduct unbecoming {171} an officer; that he made an intimate friend of an ex-convict in Santiago, and employed him as a newspaper correspondent to blacken the character of eminent American officers and advertise himself; that Rathbone was unjustly accused and convicted through Wood's direct agency; that Wood had been guilty of extravagance; that he had accepted while Governor-General presents from a gambling house in Havana, and so on.
All this evidence and much more was laid before the Committee of the Senate on Military Affairs and was most thoroughly aired. The result was the absolute vindication of Wood, his confirmation as Major-General of the Regular Army and a report which is a part of the records of the Senate in which it is written that:... "not one of them has a better claim, by reason of his past record and experience as a commander, than has General Wood; and in the opinion of the Committee no one has in view of his present rank equal claim to his on the ground of merit measured by the considerations suggested."
The whole episode thus ended in still greater credit to General Wood. It is only interesting {172} and in point here and now because it brings out the fact that the man himself never had the support of the Washington Army Department men until his service in the Philippines, except here and there amongst those officers who have served under him. Doubtless his extraordinary executive work in getting the Rough Riders ready for action and his methods which over-rode precedents and destroyed red tape throughout the whole of the War Department of that day had much to do with this. That there should follow in so few months his remarkable success in Santiago, his appointment as Governor-General of Cuba, his quick and successful organization and administration of the Island so that it could be turned over to the Cubans in such short order--all tended to fan the flames of prejudice. Hence when the opportunity of the Rathbone affair occurred the flames became a veritable conflagration, which, however, burned only those who brought the charges and touched the character of Wood himself not at all.
In the meantime early in 1903 he started upon his duties in the Philippines. Instead of proceeding by the usual route through California and {173} over the Pacific to Manila, Wood decided to make the voyage the other way round with a definite plan for acquiring data upon his new subject and relative to his new duties as he went along.
In Egypt he spent some time with Lord Cromer, then just preparing to give up his work there as Viceroy. Cromer, like all other persons in executive capacities throughout the world, knew well all that General Wood had done in Cuba. He had a very high appreciation of what had been accomplished in the time, because from his own experience he knew better than most men what the difficulties had been. He took a great liking for the quiet, stalwart American and told him that his administration in Cuba was one of the finest in Colonial history and the best in our generation. Later when Lord Cromer was asked to suggest some one to succeed himself in Egypt he said that unfortunately the best man was unavailable since he was an American citizen named Leonard Wood.
He gave him all the facilities for studying the government and administration of the British protectorate and helped him wherever and {174} whenever he could. Wood's great interest was the study of the way in which men of different and conflicting religious beliefs were handled, and he collected large quantities of books and documents to be studied later as he proceeded eastward. No man could have asked for higher appreciation than was accorded him voluntarily by the able and experienced administrator of Egyptian affairs.
From Cairo he proceeded to India and spent sufficient time to accumulate information there. He was to govern a Mohammedan population mixed up with Confucians, cannibals, headhunters and religions of twenty different varieties, and he studied as he went along all the methods employed in similar situations to preserve order without creating religious wars.
He even made a special journey to Java at the invitation of the Dutch government, where the Dutch governor gave him all the assistance in his power. Here he found the problem more closely allied to his own than elsewhere.
So that on his arrival in Manila he had gathered information upon most of the problems which would shortly confront him from sources {175} of unquestioned authenticity and from men of unquestioned ability. Some friend one night in Manila spoke of the large number of books that filled the walls of his house and wondered when he expected to get time to read them. Wood's answer was that he had read them all and only used them now as reference books to refresh his memory.
New as the problems were, therefore, he had by the time he began active work as Governor whatever preparation any one could secure for the work in hand.
The Spaniards had failed in their government in the Philippines as they had elsewhere. In Mindanao and Sulu--the country, or islands, inhabited by the Moros--they had failed signally because of their intolerance of the religious beliefs of the people and their careless impatience generally towards a colony which from its very nature could not produce much money. Furthermore they did not send sufficient military forces or sufficiently able officers to maintain their supremacy. And finally they did not deal with the people through the native clergy and priests. Consequently when the Americans came in the Moros were united only {176} in their hatred of the white race, placed no confidence in anything their rulers told them and only obeyed white-man-made laws as long as the white man was in sight.
After all a sultan or datu had his position and authority which had come down to him through generations and his religion which had been taught him from birth. He saw no reason why he should give up these without a struggle just because some other man arrived with a different religion and a different form of sultan government. The country was such that it was easy to avoid the new rulers. Transportation over large parts of the southern islands was through jungle and pathless forests where even riding a horse was impossible. Streams without bridges, settlements without approaches except a trail, tropical climates to which only the Moros themselves were accustomed spread over a land of almost impenetrable jungle. The Moros themselves understood such a situation and could easily move from one spot to another, one island to another, one settlement to another; while the army had to fight its way in and then fight its way out again.