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On April 6, 1917, war having been that week declared by the United States against Germany, Major-General Leonard Wood, ranking officer in the United States Army--that is to say, the man occupying the senior position in our army--being then in sound health of mind and body and fifty-six years of age, wrote and personally delivered two identical letters, one to the Adjutant-General of the Army and the other to the Chief of Staff, requesting assignment for military service abroad.
No acknowledgment or reply was ever received from either source.
Early in April he received notice that the Department of the East of which he was then commander was abolished and in its place three new and smaller departments created, in spite of vigorous protests by several Governors of Atlantic States. He was offered any one of the following {226} three military positions that he might select--the Philippines, Hawaii or the "less important post" at Charleston, South Carolina.
He at once selected the post at Charleston.
On May 12th he proceeded to Charleston and began the organization of the Southeastern Department. In the months immediately following he had selected and laid out eleven large training camps and had taken charge of the supervision of three officers' training camps, one at Oglethorpe, one at Atlanta and one at Little Rock.
On August 26th he received orders to proceed to Camp Funston in Kansas to command the cantonment there and train for service a division of national troops designated as the 89th Division.
Towards the end of the year he was ordered to proceed to Europe to observe the military operations of the war. Leaving Camp Funston the day before Thanksgiving, he landed in Liverpool on Christmas Day, 1917. In London he called by invitation upon General Robertson, the British Chief of Staff, and upon his old friend, Sir John French. He then proceeded to Paris on December 31, and between January 2nd and 14th, 1918, {227} went over the British front with Generals Cator and Rawlinson. On the 16th he was at Soissons with the French.
For the next few days the examination of the French front continued at and near the Chemin des Dames sector.
On January 27th he went with some French officers and men and a number of American officers to look into the work of the 6th French army training school, where artillery practice was in progress at Fère-en-Tardenois. He was standing behind a mortar, the center man of the five officers watching the gun crew fire the mortar, when a shell burst, or detonated, inside the gun.
The entire gun crew was blown to pieces. The four officers on either side of General Wood were killed. He himself received a wound in the muscles of the left arm and lost part of the right sleeve of his tunic. Six fragments of the shell passed through his clothing and two of them killed the officers on either side of him. He was the only man within a space of twelve feet of the mortar who was not instantly killed. Many were wounded, including two others of our own officers.
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After a night in the field first-aid hospital, where his arm was dressed, he motored approximately a hundred miles to Paris the next day and went into the French officers' hospital in the Hotel Ritz.
This hospital was in the old portion of the Ritz Hotel. General Wood was the first foreign officer to be admitted to it. It was full of wounded French officers and men from the different fronts; some of them from Salonika; some sent back from Germany, hopelessly crippled, and held as unfit for further service by the Germans; and many from the Western front.
Here he got very near the soul of the French Army and came in touch with that indomitable spirit which made that army fight best and hardest when things looked darkest. Thanks to an excellent physical condition he made a rapid recovery, described by French surgeons as found only among the very young. He was a guest of the French Government while at the hospital and received every possible courtesy. On the 16th of February after having talked with many of the French officers in the hospital and called, at their request, upon Clemenceau, President Poincaré, Joffre and {229} others, he left Paris entirely cured of his slight wound and proceeded to the headquarters of the French Army of the North at Vizay. There he met and talked with Generals D'Esperey and Gourand, visited Rheims and Bar-le-duc and spent the day of the 20th at Verdun.
During the next few days he visited the United States Army headquarters at Chaumont and Toul and was back in Paris on the 26th, when he received orders from the A. E. F. to return to the United States by way of Bordeaux. On the 21st of March he arrived in New York and was summoned four days later to appear before the Senate committee on military affairs to report his observations.
He was then examined by the Mayo examining board, pronounced absolutely fit physically and on April 12th resumed command of the 89th Division at Camp Funston, Kansas.
The training of this division was practically finished in late May and the 89th was thereupon ordered abroad for service.
After seeing some of the elements of the division off for the evacuation station at Camp Mills, Long {230} Island, New York, General Wood left Funston himself and proceeded to Mills to see to the reception of his division and look to its embarkation. He arrived at the Long Island camp on May 25th and there found an order from the War Department relieving him of his command of the 89th Division and instructing him to proceed to San Francisco to assume command of the Western Department. After finishing some necessary work he went to Washington on the 27th and saw the Secretary of War. Little is known of what took place at this conversation except that General Wood requested that he be reinstated in his command of the 89th Division and sent abroad, which was refused.
Wood saw the President, explained the situation and was told that the latter would take the matter under consideration.
No consideration was ever reported.
Meantime the order sending him to California created such an uproar throughout the United States that it was rescinded and General Wood was ordered to Camp Funston again to train a new division--the 10th--which was ready to go {231} abroad when the armistice was signed on November 11th.
This constitutes General Wood's services to his country during the period of the war.
Much might be said in regard to this history. Much might be surmised as to the causes which led to keeping the man who was the senior officer of the army out of the war entirely. Much--very much--has been said throughout this country in and out of print during the past two years. The theory that he was too old for active service could not be a reason, since he is younger than many general officers who did see service abroad--younger as a matter of fact than General Pershing himself. It is hardly conceivable that physical condition could have been a reason, since at least twice in the last two years he has been passed by expert physical examination boards in the regular routine of army life and found sound, mentally and physically. He does, to be sure, limp and has had to do so for years on account of an accident in Cuba fifteen or sixteen years ago. Yet this could hardly unfit him for service in France when it did not unfit him for service in the {232} Philippine jungle, or the active life which he has led for the past ten years.
There has been considerable surmise as to whether his amazing campaign for preparedness, his speeches and his many activities in the officers' training camps organization and administration prejudiced the authorities against him. This again is hardly credible since it is manifestly inconceivable that those men in charge of the prosecution of our part in the great war, with the immense responsibility resting upon their shoulders, could possibly have allowed personal prejudice and favoritism to have played any part in their decision in regard to any man--least of all the most important man in the Regular Army.
Some controversy arose as to whether Wood's friendship and relation to Theodore Roosevelt might not have created hostility in administration and army circles. This again is beyond credence when the importance of the men on both sides is considered and the terrific importance of events at the time is taken into account. Here again it is inconceivable that any man or group of men could at such times and in such circumstances {233} allow anything personal to sway his or their judgment.
The incontestable fact still remains, however, that the one man in the Army who by his whole life in the United States, in many parts of the earth, had during a period of thirty years been preparing himself for just such an occasion, who had for four years been trying to get the people of the country and the government to prepare, who had appeared before Senate military commissions and other similar bodies and registered his belief in the necessity for certain measures, all of which were adopted by the Government as recommended by him--that the one man who had done all this should not have been selected to do any active service whatever at the front, but should have been offered posts in the Philippines, Hawaii and California when he was applying for service in France. Lloyd George wanted him; France wanted him; and the American Army wanted him.
All sorts and conditions of men throughout the United States expressed their opinion upon the subject during this war period and are doing so {234} still, but the one man who has said nothing is General Wood himself. With his inherited and acquired characteristic of doing something, of never remaining idle, with the habit acquired from years of military discipline and respect for orders emanating from properly constituted authority, he put in his application again and again for service and then accepted without public comment whatever orders were issued to him.
Here again is the same simple, direct mind of the man who has at no time lost his sense of proportion, who has not become excited because his chance was not given him--the chance for which he had spent long years of preparation--who did not let this outward wallpaper--plaster--showy thing divert him from the essential point, the great beam of our war preparation house--the necessity that every man, woman and child should do all he or she could do to help the Government of the United States carry the war--or our part of it--to a successful conclusion when that Government finally made up its mind to go in.
Wood declined to become a martyr. He had no bitter feelings. He was, as any other man of {235} his prominence and character would be, disappointed at having no opportunity to serve his country at the front. But he took what came to him and did it as usual with extraordinary quickness, effectiveness and thoroughness.
Indeed speculation on the subject is not likely to produce much profit. It is only of importance in the present place as illustrating again the make-up of the subject of this biographical sketch. He took no steps other than those regularly and properly open to him to secure service. He attempted no roundabout methods. He kept his own counsel and followed his old maxim of "Do it and don't talk about it." His requests for reasons for denying him of all men the right to fight for his country on the battle line made through proper channels--never otherwise--produced no answers in any case and to this day the whole amazing episode is entirely without explanation.
Meantime the man's characteristic energy and thoroughness produced extraordinary results in other fields.
In his short sojourn in Charleston it was his duty to select and prepare at once a certain {236} number of camps, or cantonments as they came to be called, within the jurisdiction of the South Eastern Department. And this he proceeded to do with great rapidity. Not only were all the sites he selected passed without exception, but they proved to be in every instance safe, sanitary and sufficient for the purpose. This was no easy matter with almost every town and city in the South sending delegations to him to ask that it be selected as the site of one of the camps, with the prodigious amount of political influence brought to bear from all sides and with the necessity of offending nobody, of making all work towards one end--the immediate preparation for homes for the men who were to make the new army.
It was all so skillfully handled that there is not a place in the South of any size which has not sounded and does not sound the praises of General Wood. He selected the camps and made them with that experience and knowledge that were his because of the fact that he was an army officer and a doctor who had done much the same thing and had had much the same work in Cuba and the Philippines.
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One would expect something of the sort from any able man with such preparation, but one would not expect such a man to leave the Department with the extraordinary popularity and the multitude of expressions of good will and affection which Wood carried away with him after these few months of work.
In the midst of the journeyings to and fro to look over possible sites and all the work entailed in preparing the camps he found time to supervise the three officers' training camps already mentioned, which were carried out upon the lines of the earlier ones with the aid of the Officers' Training Camps Association.
Upon being transferred to Camp Funston near Fort Riley in Kansas, Wood began in the first days of September, 1917, the training of a new division of raw recruits from the selective draft. He had the assistance of a nucleus of army officers and some few army men, but the bulk of the division consisted of new men and of new officers recently from the officers' training camps. And this work was well on its way and the division {238} taking form when he received orders to go to Europe.
It is difficult in this limited space to go into the details of his work abroad, and most of it in any case was technical matter more adapted to a military report. The results of some of his conversations are, however, of interest now as showing the situation as it appeared to important men, military and political, in Europe at that time.
Some one said during the summer of 1918 when asked how much the American man and woman in the street really knew of what was going on in Europe, that if the headlines of American newspapers were disregarded and the actual telegraphic reports themselves read day by day, nearly everything that anybody from commanding generals down knew was known to that reader. There were, of course, many discussions amongst the guiding intellects, political and military, which never saw the light. There were, naturally, plans discussed and never carried out which the American citizen did not hear of at any time. But the general consensus of opinion seems to be that the {239} American newspaper reader knew almost as much as any one of what was happening and that he certainly knew as much of what was going to happen as the men in the inner circle.
Much that has come out since the armistice shows a condition of affairs almost as the man in the street knew it at the time. In the winter of 1917-18 we knew that a huge drive was scheduled by the Germans on the Franco-Belgian front in the spring. In the following summer we knew the doubtful situation around Château-Thierry. In the middle of July we knew that something was happening, that the Americans were beginning to go in in large numbers, that the German "push" was slowing up; and that a turn had been made. Finally we knew that the German army was suddenly retiring, and for a month before the armistice was signed we knew that it was going to be signed. Indeed so sure was the American public of this last that they celebrated the end of the war throughout this great land a week ahead of time, because of a report which, though literally incorrect, was in essence true and known to be true.
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It is not uninteresting, therefore, to review the sentiments and opinions which Wood found upon his arrival amongst the French and English statesmen and soldiers between January 1 and February 26th, 1918.
In London Lloyd George, the British Premier, knew Wood as the administrator of Cuba and the Philippines. He knew also of Wood's experience with, and knowledge of European armies. He was anxious for Wood to be in Europe. He laid great emphasis upon the shortage of American air service which made it difficult for American troops to work as a separate unit without English or French coöperation. He pled for American troops at the earliest possible moment and offered more transportation facilities--even though England had already transported not only her own men but many of ours across the Atlantic.
General Sir William Robertson stated in January that there was an impending crisis coming in the early spring; that Germany would make an immensely powerful drive toward Paris or the channel ports or both; and that in his opinion the Allied lines would hold until the Americans {241} got into the war with full strength. But he made no concealment of the fact that the next six months would be very critical ones.
Marshal Joffre held similar views. Both officers expressed the opinion that the summer of 1918 would be the crisis and deciding point of the war. They, too, felt the French and English lines would hold, but they laid heavy stress upon the importance of more troops from America.
On the French front Wood lunched and had a long talk with General Gouraud and another at Paris later with General Pétain whom he knew and who knew well the history of Wood's career in organization and administration. Pétain is said to have expressed the hope that Wood might soon be in France on active duty and to have said that when he did come he would put him in command of an army of French and American troops.
As Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, next to the highest rank in that order--General Wood was naturally received by all French officers and statesmen. This order having been conferred upon him some years before because of his record in Cuba and the Philippines placed him in a small {242} group of men, most of them, naturally, French, who are the distinguished men of Europe. His reception by the President of France, by the premier, Georges Clemenceau, and other French statesmen came as a matter of course. But the conversations which took place between the American soldier and these men have never, naturally, been made public except in some of their bare essentials. Nor will any one ever know just what was said unless one or another of the parties to them shall some time disclose it himself.
There seems to be no doubt, however, of the very warm reception which this senior officer of the American army was given. His record in preparedness work, his record in administrative and organization work were all well known to the statesmen of these two countries who were from their experience with colonial matters so well fitted to judge of what he had accomplished along these lines.
General Wood's opinion as the result of his trip was that the American troops should serve by divisions for a time with the French and English rather than as a separate army from the start, {243} because of the fact that all matters of supply, equipment, artillery, air service and so on which were so incomplete in the American service and so complete by this time in the British and French services would apply to the Americans as well as to the others and that the training alongside the veterans of over three years of war would make the effectiveness of the American troops quicker, better and more definite--would in the end increase efficiency and save life.
After having reported to the Senate committee and returned to Camp Funston he took up with immeasurably renewed vigor the work of getting the 89th Division, which he was to take abroad, ready for its service, and all was prepared when the order came for them to move to New York for embarkation. This work of transportation being practically completed and the big division ready to go on board ship, Leonard Wood felt that at last his chance to take his part in the war at the front had come.
It is practically impossible for any one, therefore, to realize just what it meant to him, or would have meant to any man, to receive notification as {244} he was almost in the act of going on board the transport that his command of the division he had trained and organized was taken away from him, another officer put in his place and he himself ordered to the farthest possible extremity of the United States in the opposite direction. It is certainly impossible to express here what his feelings were since nobody really knows them.
Imagination, however, which plays so important a part in this world's affairs will play its part here as elsewhere, and some estimate of what effect it had upon the country was shown in the outcry which arose everywhere and which created such sudden wrath that the order itself was immediately rescinded and changed to the Funston appointment.
The character of men is exhibited in infinite ways and by infinite methods, but never more surely than during critical periods when passions run high and injustice seems to be in the saddle. It is always at such times that reserve force, mental strength, and all the sound basic qualities which make up what we call character play their important parts in the drama of life. No one has, {245} so far as our history tells us, shown greater strength of this nature than Abraham Lincoln, and it is that reserve, that amazing common sense which "with malice toward none, with charity for all" led him on all occasions no matter how extraordinary the provocation to decline to let personalities, jealousies, or any of the baser passions control his actions or influence his decisions.
It would be ridiculous for any one to assume that General Wood was not cut to the quick by this unexplained action, which took the cup from his lips as he was about to drink, but there never has appeared anywhere anything emanating from him which criticized, questioned or in any way took exception to it. One may read, however, between the lines of his short good-by to the division which he created many thoughts that may have been in his mind and that certainly were in the minds of the officers of the 89th to whom this simple address was the first intimation that he was not to lead them into action in France. It is so direct, so simple, so manly that, like all such documents, it is only with time that its great {246} hearted spirit makes the true impression on any reader. It will take its place in the history of this country amongst the few documents which live on always because they exhibit a wise and sane outlook upon life and because they make a universal appeal to the best that lives always like a divine spark in the heart of every man.
It makes the boy in school exclaim, "Some day when I grow up I will do that." It lives in the dreams that come just before sleep as the attitude the young man would like to take when his critical hour comes. It cheers the old, since they can say: "So long as this can be done there is no fear for our native land."
Here it is:
"I will not say good-by, 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 {247} 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 is 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 interest as if I were with you. Good luck; and God bless you!"
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STATE Of KANSASGOVERNOR'S OFFICEKNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS:INASMUCH as the life of a state, its strength and virtue and moral worth are directly dependent upon the character of the citizens who compose it, andINASMUCH as it is a solemn obligation imposed upon the Governor of the state to promote and advance the interests and well-being of the commonwealth in every way consistent with due regard for the rights and privileges of sister states, andWHEREAS, the soldier, Leonard Wood, Major General in the United States Army and now commandant at Camp Funston, has shown by his daily life, by his devotion to duty, by his high ideals and by his love of country, that he is a high-minded man after our own hearths, four-square to all the world, one good to know,NOW, THEREFORE, I Arthur Capper, Governor of the State of Kansas, do hereby declare the said
MAJOR GENERAL LEONARD WOOD
to be, in character and in ideals, a true Kansan. And by virtue of the esteem and affection the people of Kansas bear him, I do furthermore declare him to be to all intents and purposes a citizen of this state, and as such to be entitled to speak the Kansas language, to follow Kansas customs and to be known as
CITIZEN EXTRAORDINARY
IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto subscribed my name and caused to be affixed the Great Seal of the State of Kansas. Done at Topeka, the capitol, this 19th day of December, D. 1919Arthur CapperGOVERNOR
[Seal of the State of Kansas] By the Governor
[Signature] Secretary of State
[Signature] Asst. Secretary of State
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A few days later Wood had returned to Funston and begun preparations for the training of the 10th Division, when by executive action the Governor of Kansas acknowledged on his own behalf and on behalf of the State the General's services to his country by making him a "citizen extraordinary" of the State.
The story of the Tenth Division is short but illuminating. It was composed principally of drafted men. Its first groups began to organize at Funston on the 10th of August--raw men from office, farm and shop. They found there the skeletons of so-called regular regiments--regiments which were regular only in name; that is to {250} say, there were only a very few regular officers of experience and a limited number of men recently recruited under the old system. On the 24th General Wood reviewed the whole division. On November 1st it was ready, trained, equipped and in condition both from the physical and the military point of view to go abroad. And when the armistice was signed on November 11th an advance contingent had already gone to France to prepare for its reception. About the middle of September the British and French Senior Mission--three officers of each army--reported at Funston and remained there for six weeks. And upon their departure on November 1st after a long, rigid and critical examination of the division they stated that in their opinion it was by far the best prepared and trained division that they had seen in this country.
Here again appears the same quality that made McKinley appoint Wood Governor-General of Cuba; that made Roosevelt send him to organize the apparently unorganizable part of the Philippine Islands; that caused the French to award him a very high order of the Legion of Honor; {251} that made the State of Kansas take him into its family as a citizen; that led the generals of Europe to hope he would come and be one of them; and finally that caused many hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen to follow him and support him in his plans to prepare the people of his nation for what eventually came upon them.
With the signing of the armistice and the victorious ending of the war Wood's activities did not cease. With characteristic energy he began the work of looking out for the soldiers who would soon be demobilized from the army and thrown upon their own resources. He saw how changed the outlook of many of these men would be. He saw the troubles in which thousands--actually millions--of them would be involved, not through any fault of their own, not through any fault of the Government or of army life, but because they had undergone certain mental changes incident to training, to active service, and hence could not again return to the point they had reached when their military service began.
He, therefore, instituted in Chicago, where as Commander of the Central Department he had his {252} headquarters, as well as in St. Louis, Kansas City and Cleveland, organizations to look to the finding of employment for returning officers and men. And in addresses and all methods open to him he urged the organization of similar bodies in all cities to accomplish elsewhere the same object. His attitude was that of the father of children--the rearrangement on new lines of the American family; and he again found universal support.
"Appreciation of the work done by our Soldiers, Sailors and Marines in the Great War can best be shown by active measures to return them to suitable civil employment upon their discharge from service. The four million men inducted into the service, less the dead, are being returned to their homes. In seeing that they are returned to suitable civil employment, and by that I mean employment in which they will find contentment, we will find it at times difficult to deal with them. We must remember that many of these men, before going in for the great adventure, had never been far from home, had never seen the big things of life, had never had the opportunity of finding {253} themselves. During their service in the army they found out that all men were equal except as distinguished one from the other by such characteristics as physique, education and character. They discovered that men who are loyal, attentive to duty, always striving to do more than required, stood out among their fellows and were marked for promotion. Naturally many of them now see that their former employment will not give them the opportunities for advancement which they have come to prize, and for that reason they want a change. They want a kind of employment which offers opportunities for promotion. Many such men are fitted for forms of employment which offer this advantage, and they must be given the opportunity to try to make good in the lines of endeavor which they elect to follow. It is not charity to give these men the opportunities for which they strive. It is Justice. Others are not mentally equipped to take advantage of such opportunities if offered, and with these we will find it more difficult to deal. They must be reasoned with and directed, if possible, into the kind of employment best suited to their characteristics. Let us {254} remember that a square deal for our honorably discharged Soldiers, Sailors and Marines will strengthen the morale of the Nation and will help to create a sound national consciousness ready to act promptly in support of Truth, Justice and Right" [Footnote:Address of Leonard Wood.]
There is, with the differences patent because of time and place and surrounding circumstances, a flavor to this plea that recalls another address upon a similar subject more than fifty years ago:
"It is for the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." [Footnote:Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech.]
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In these days, therefore, immediately following the Great War it is well to keep in our own minds and try to put into the minds of others the great elemental truths of life; and to try at the same time to keep out of our and their minds in so far as possible the unessential and changing superficialities which never last long and which never move forward the civilization of the human race.
This very simple biographical sketch is not an attempt to settle the problems of the hour. Such an attempt might excite the amusement and interest of students of that mental disease known as paranoia--students who are far too busy at the moment as it is without this addition to the unusually large supply of patients--but it could not add anything either to the pleasure or entertainment of any one else. That the simple biographical sketch can even approach the latter {258} accomplishment may be held to be a matter for reasonable doubt.
Nor, furthermore, is the sketch an attempt at the soap box or other variety of philosophy which one individual attempts to thrust down the mental throats of his fellow beings. There exists a hazy suspicion that the fellow beings are quite competent to decide what they will swallow mentally and what they will, vulgarly speaking, expectorate forthwith.
The simple biographical sketch is a frank attempt to express, as at least one person sees it, the character, the accomplishments and the service rendered by one man to his country throughout a life which seems to have been singularly sturdy, honest, normal and consistent, and which, therefore, is an example to his countrymen that may in these somewhat hectic times well be considered and perhaps even emulated.
At the risk, however, of entering the paranoiac's clinic it would seem almost necessary if not even desirable to apply the record discussed to the situation which confronts us in these days, since biography has no special significance unless it {259} brings to others some more or less effective stimulus to better and greater endeavor on their own part.
If, therefore, the life and record of a man like Leonard Wood is to be of value to others it must to some extent at least be considered in relation to the events of his day and time. These events have been sufficiently startling in the light of all previous history to make it perhaps permissible to glance over them.
Roughly speaking, since Wood was born transportation has become so perfected that, in the light of our navy's recent accomplishments with the seaplane, it is now possible for a human being to go from New York to London in the same period of time that it took then to go from New York to New London. It is fair to assume then that the distance of New York from London so far as human travel goes is or will shortly be the same as the distance of New York from New London when Wood was born.
Roughly speaking since Wood was born intercourse between persons by means of conversation has become so perfected that it is now possible for {260} two people, one in New York and the other in San Francisco, to converse over the telephone--wireless or otherwise--as easily as could two persons when Wood was born talk from one room to another through an open doorway. So that for practical purposes the three or four thousand mile breadth of this continent is reduced to what then was a matter of ten feet.
One might continue indefinitely, but these two examples are sufficient. If San Francisco is no further away than the next room and if London can be reached as quickly as New London, and if myriads of other physical changes of this sort have occurred in sixty years, then it is fair to assume that there has been an equal amount of resulting psychological change. These changes in the relation of man to his surroundings and the consequent changes in his relations to himself and his fellow beings have probably done more to rearrange the world on a different basis than all the developments of the half-dozen centuries that preceded the nineteenth.
The elimination of distance, the making of human relation as easy for continents as for {261} adjoining communities lessens the size of the world and standardizes the rules that govern life. All intellectual, political, commercial and military procedures have changed therefore in the last half century to a greater extent than in hundreds of years prior thereto. One race in the fifth or sixth grade of civilization begins to discover what the other race in the first grade is doing. One commercial country of a lower order finds what it is losing because of another country of a higher order of commercialism. The laborers of Barcelona discover what the laborers of New York are receiving in compensation for the same work. The people of Russia discover the different political conditions existing amongst themselves and the people of England and France. The government of the German Empire sees what a united nation backed by the biggest army on earth might do in Europe. The men of Austria who have no vote learn what the men of the United States procure from universal suffrage.
With the belief on every human being's part that the other fellow is better off than he, with the education which goes on through the medium {262} of emigration and immigration, with the immense number of detail short cuts, with the prodigious increase in reading and the resulting acquirement of the ideas of others, with the myriad of other matters patent to any one who thinks--with all this and because of it the methods and procedure of daily life have changed entirely throughout most of the civilized world since a man who is now nearly sixty was born.
At the same time the family remains the same; the marriage law is unchanged; the right of private property is what it was in the days of ancient Rome. The Constitution of the United States is what it was a hundred and thirty years ago. Justice is the same as it was in the time of Alexander. The Golden Rule has not been altered since the time of Christ. Love, hate, fear and courage stand as they were originally some time prior to the stone age.
To revert, then, to the simile of the construction of the house, it seems true that while the plaster and the wall paper--the decorations of its interior and exterior--change from time to nevertheless on the whole, as a rule, in the main {263} the passage of the great ages has not materially changed the supports of the structure--and never will.
In the matter of interior and exterior decoration periods come and go during which those who build houses decorate according to schools of art. It is the only belief that any sane and hopeful human being can have that these schools of decoration for the old house of civilization in the main steadily improve. If it is not so, then we have nothing to live for, nothing to which we may look forward. Also, however, there are fashions and fads running along by the side of these great schools which are suggestive, amusing or ludicrous, as the case may be. The cubists and the followers of the old masters paint at the same time. One, however, dies shortly and the other lives on--often to be sure affected in some slight way by the grotesque but honest fad, but never giving way to it.
In the month of November, 1918, greater changes of this nature took place in the political world than in all the years which preceded that month since the beginning of the Christian era. {264} In that month some scores of crowned heads stepped down from their thrones and made haste to reach shelter as do the rats in a kitchen when the cook turns on the electric light. At that time something like three hundred millions of people gave up their particular forms of government and to a certain extent have been living on since without any substitute.
Some of these crowned heads have sat on their thrones from five to ten centuries. Some of the governments have lived as long.
It looks like a general tumble of the house of civilization. And yet most of these millions of people go on getting up in the morning, going to bed at night and, impossible as it may seem, conducting commercial enterprises. The kings have gone; the governments have gone; yet the people remain and their daily life goes on--not as usual --but in the main the same.
At such a time amidst such stupendous changes it is natural that an infinite number of plans for reconstruction come forward. All the century-old panaceas crop up. All the moss-grown plans for a perfect world are thrust forward in a new {265} dress and naturally gain credence. And with the increased ease of intercommunication of individuals and ideas the opportunity not only for many more but for widely divergent theories to make themselves heard is immeasurably increased. Thus it becomes possible for a Lenine and a Trotzky to leave their tenement flats in the slums of New York and proceed to the palaces of the Czar to show the hundred and twenty millions of Russians what can be done--and, what is far more to the point, get a hearing. Thus it becomes possible for the International Workers of the World in Russia, France, England and America to get together in conference in Switzerland or elsewhere and discuss how best to destroy not only governments, but private property, law, order, the family and all the beams of the great house at one time. Thus it becomes possible for a host of less radical but none the less pernicious plans for the good or evil of the world to fly about amongst unstable but well-meaning minds.
Our country, so remote in miles from the scenes of these upheavals, is by the development of {266} modern times so near that it is to a certain extent affected by them.
In a population of one hundred millions in the United States there are probably one hundred million different views entertained upon each of the questions of this disturbed period. But a fair classification of them could be safely made into radicals, moderates and conservatives--Bolsheviki and theorists, slow-moving and hard-thinking citizens and stiff-necked reactionaries--all honest and earnest in the mean. If the Bolsheviki and theorists outnumber the others we shall have a situation in the United States similar to that in Russia, Austria and Germany. If the stiff-necked reactionaries outnumber the others, we shall smother the flame for a time only to have it burst forth shortly in an infinitely more terrible explosion. If the slow-moving, hard-thinking citizens outnumber the others, we shall maintain the main structure of our house so laboriously built throughout the ages while we change to some extent the nature of the wall paper and the plaster to adapt it to modern conditions.
Some of us want to achieve the first, some the {267} second and some the third status; and it would be safe to say that up to the present in this country the people of the great middle class--the not rich, the not poor, the steady business man, the ordinary mother of a family--are in the majority and are trying to adapt themselves to the new conditions even if only in a slow and somewhat halting manner.
It will help them and therefore help the country to maintain themselves and itself on an even keel until the storm subsides if they can have some concrete standard to work by. And as standards in this sense usually become established by example, by what each of us thinks the man he looks up to is doing, thinking and planning, it seems fair to say that the example of a few leading men of the strong sanity which characterizes General Wood is having now or will have in the future a great influence for good.
When we are all complaining at the changing conditions, when we see apparently permanent organizations like the government of thousand- year-old empires crumbling in a month, when we hear the new-old theories for a new form of {268} existence, we are somewhat dazed, somewhat influenced by the outward signs and somewhat skeptical about our own small but to ourselves important outlook. At such a moment the voice of one who says in substance: "Do not let superficial changes --no matter how important they seem--make us forget the law of man and nature; do not forget that the fittest survives; do not imagine that wars are over because the most terrible one in history is just finished; do not hesitate to prepare for your own duties and those of your country; do not forget that organization and coöperation produce peace, safety, prosperity and happiness"--when a voice in our land announces this and its owner proves by his whole life the truth of his statements, then it pays to listen and inwardly digest.
In spite of all we are being told to the contrary, there need be no alarm for the future if the country contains enough of such leaders to make themselves heard above the babel of new cries and beliefs, notwithstanding the attractive pictures some of these theorists present. For that reason leaders must always exist where progress is to be {269} made and the great majority must stand behind them to back them up.
The effective spear cannot do its work without its steel point, nor yet without its long handle to force the point home.
This biographical sketch treats of one of these spear points and as such represents to a greater or less degree all great sane leaders, though it speaks of but one.
Leonard Wood's personality is one of mental sanity and physical health. It is non-reactionary and non-visionary. It is military only in the sense that the army happens to have been his business in life. His business might have been that of the law, of banking, or leather, without in the least changing in it. He once said of this:
"The officers of the Army and Navy are the professional servants of the government in matters pertaining to the military establishment. They are like engineers, doctors, lawyers, or any other class of professional men whose services people employ because they are expert in their line of work. They do not initiate wars. Nine-tenths of all wars have their origin directly or indirectly in {270} issues arising out of trade. The people make war; the government declares it; and the officers of the army and navy are charged with the responsibility of terminating it with such means and implements as the people may give them."
His voice raised in behalf of preparedness refers therefore to the military, because as a Major-General in the United States Army he is not empowered to speak of other walks in life. Yet his own wide experience in Cuba and the Philippines in administration, very little of which was military, is a witness of his belief in preparedness in an life.
He founded schools where there were none to prepare citizens for the new Cuban republic. He reorganized and built up customs laws and regulations where there were only attempts at such in order to prepare revenue to build roads and finish public works to make a busy and healthy nation. He reëstablished sane marriage laws in order to prepare a solid community resting upon the basis of the clearly defined family. In the Philippines he instituted local government to prepare the islands for self-government.