{177}
While the problem of administration was not unlike that in Cuba in so far as the organizing of courts, law, education, native officials and so on went, there were here in Moroland the infinitely more difficult and delicate tasks of dealing with many different religious laws and customs and the hereditary rank and rights of tribal rulers, none of which existed in Cuba.
The quality of statesmanship in Wood which dealt with these problems and settled them so that from a slave-holding, polygamous, headhunting land there arose a self-governing community is of the highest order.
It was put into force in the commander's usual, commonplace, thorough way without haste or excitement, but where necessary by force of arms which required more than a hundred engagements and many hard-fought battles. Wood first spent some time in Manila going over the situation with Mr. Taft. There he learned Taft's wishes and views and prepared his military forces. He was both military commander and civil governor of the Moroland and as such was again an absolute autocrat. When he was ready he started directly {178} into the jungle from Zamboanga. The journey took him and his staff through forests, over unfordable rivers, across mountain ranges on foot, across the straits that separated one island from another in dugouts, into forts, into towns, into villages and hamlets in a nerve-racking journey of over a month without a pause except for necessary sleep.
He wanted to see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears at first hand what was the condition of affairs, what was going on, what were the different and varying situations in order that he might the more correctly and certainly draw up plans for the reorganization of the colony. In one village he was a military commander issuing orders; in another he was a criminal or civil judge sitting in session; in another he was a listener to the advancement of the plans and the religious ceremonials of the sultans or datus of the place.
Naturally all came to see him. He was the embodiment of the new conquerors and curiosity alone would have brought every one, to say nothing of policy which brought those who desired {179} to impress him in order that special favors might be expected for themselves. He was the Great White Sultan judged by the standards known to their other sultans.
And the problems were infinitely varied and in most cases entirely new ones to the "doctor from Boston."
But, as in other places, he used his own methods in each instance to settle the particular problem, always emphasizing the one great fact that if the Moros would deal fairly with the Government of the United States they would benefit as never before, secure fair and just treatment and be assured of their right to live in peace.
Yet when things became a little clogged he took immediate steps to clear the situation with force if necessary, but always with diplomacy if that could be made to do the job.
"In Jolo there was a mess. The puffed-up Sultan, with whom General Bates in 1899 had made a treaty by which the Sultan engaged to keep order, was away in Singapore having a 'time.' His brother, the Rajah Mudah, was acting as regent. The sub-chiefs and datus were in a great {180} row. The Moros were murdering and robbing, all over the island. General Wood led an expedition to find out what was the matter. It was not a punitive expedition, but rather one meant to let the natives see the stalwart soldiers of the United States and understand the futility of resisting them. The Rajah Mudah was sulky. The General sent him a polite invitation to visit him in camp near Maibun, the Rajah's town. Mudah returned word that he was ill. Another invitation failed to budge him. General Wood ordered Colonel Scott to pay a call upon the sick Rajah and to take along a company of infantry. Colonel Scott and Captain Howard found the Rajah lounging among his pillows. He greeted them in the languid accents of the sick. Solicitous inquiries about the nature of his malady were made. The Rajah had a boil. Colonel Scott was deeply sympathetic. Would the Rajah object to showing his boil. Perhaps the visitors might be able to suggest a remedy. The Rajah did not show his boil. Captain Howard put his company into line. The Rajah sat up with a jerk, and Moros came running from all directions to see what was {181} happening. Colonel Scott very quietly explained that the soldiers had been sent as a guard of honor to escort the Rajah to the General. If the Rajah was quite sure that he was feeling sufficiently strong to travel, they would go.
Peering through half shut eyes, the Rajah Mudah pondered for a moment. Then he announced that he felt greatly improved and that undoubtedly his condition would be immensely helped by a ride in the air.
"General Wood greeted him cordially and ceremoniously. He personally conducted him around the camp, pointing out what fine, big men our soldiers were, and especially directing his attention to the machine guns. Would the Rajah like to see the guns in operation?
"After the guns had mowed down a few trees the Rajah's face assumed a thoughtful expression. He became enthusiastically friendly." [Footnote:World's Work.]
Such methods in time made an impression. Even the Moro mind began to absorb the fact that it was much better to accept the invitation than to undergo what followed any failure to do so.
{182}
Wood had also to add to his difficulties in the beginning the prejudice of army officers he found in the islands. The older men over whom he had been promoted by President McKinley had no love for him. They called him a doctor. He was not of the army fraternity. They had heard that he had done well, but not by established methods. The younger officers took their cue from their seniors and so did the enlisted men. It was a difficult problem, or series of problems, through which he had to steer a careful course. But he did it and turned the tide entirely in the other direction.
He did it by always taking his share of the hard work. Object lessons of this sort multiplied as time went on. When troops were sent out to an engagement Wood went with them and kept in the front line. When they camped for the night in the jungle he had the same bed--the ground. When they had little or nothing to eat, he had the same. Once when they came out upon the beach of one of the islands after a hard trip Wood's launch was reported a hundred yards off the surf ready with cooling fans, a good mattressed bed, excellent food and a bath. He told {183} the orderly that he would stay with the men and sent him back to the launch, taking no more notice of the matter except to scrape out a new hollow in the burning sand in the hope of finding a cooler spot to sleep.
Such episodes repeated again and again soon made a vital change of views in regard to the new governor and commander. They occurred so regularly and so often that it appeared true--this taking what came along in the day's work with the others--not a case of trying to produce effect now and then. Mr. R. H. Murray, in his article written in 1912, quoted above, speaks of an officer who served under Wood at this time and as he says quotes him as literally as he can:
"When Wood first came out in 1903, the army in the Philippines didn't know him. There were plenty of officers who reviled him as a favorite of the White House, and cussed him out for it. Pretty soon the army began to realize that he was a hustler; that he knew a good deal about the soldier's game; that he did things and did them right; that, when reveille sounded before daybreak, he was usually up and dressed before {184} us; that, when a man was down and out, and he happened to be near, he'd get off his horse and see what the matter was and fix the fellow up, if he could; that when he gave an order it was a sensible one and that he didn't change it after it went out; and that he remembered a man who did a good piece of work and showed his appreciation at every chance.
"Well, the youngsters began to swear by Wood, and the old chaps followed, so that from 'cussing him out' they began to respect him and then to admire and love him. That's the word--love. It's the easiest thing in the world to pick a fight out there now by saying something against Wood. It is always the same when men come in contact with him. I don't honestly believe there is a man in the department now who wouldn't go to hell and back for Leonard Wood."
It was again much the same story as in Cuba. It was not only the personality of the man himself, his personal magnetism, but the quiet simplicity of his methods backed by knowledge and good judgment. It was the absence of doing anything for effect, anything of the personal {185} "ego;" the getting of things done quietly, without ferment or conversation. And back of it all the absolute certainty of every one who worked with or under him that Leonard Wood would do exactly what he said he would, even though he said it quite quietly only once and even though the doing of it meant a military expedition, a battle and the death of many a good man who perhaps knew nothing of the real reasons.
Here again space is too limited to permit of an account of the work done by Wood which made a group of pirates into a relatively law-abiding community. Yet some attempt to picture the situation is necessary in order to give a slight idea of what the problem was.
It should be borne in mind that the country over which he was made Governor-General consisted of two-thirds of the Island of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago--a long chain of large and small islands extending almost to Borneo. The inhabitants were principally Mohammedans, known to the Spaniards as Moros. Along the coast of Mindanao were scattered small Philippine settlements--Christian Filipinos. Widely {186} separated back in the islands were numerous tribes speaking different dialects. In appearance they were not unlike the Diacs of Borneo. Some of them were headhunters. Among some of them cannibalism still existed in the form of religious ceremonies.
The Moros were the masters of all the seas in this vicinity. They were the old Malay pirates so well known in books of travel. The Spaniards had waged intermittent war against them since early in 1600, but they never effectively conquered them. They would send down a large expedition, win a victory and withdraw. This procedure, however, made little or no impression on the pirates, who shortly returned to their trade when the Spanish victors had returned home.
The Moros were all fanatical Mohammedans, intolerant of Christians or Christian influence, and when the Spaniards arrived in Manila about 1687 they dominated all the seas about the Philippine Islands. They were armed with all kinds of firearms, ranging from the old Queen Bess muzzle-loader to the most modern rifles. Their artillery ranged from the broadside guns of battleships of {187} the 18th Century to a smaller cannon of bronze, made principally in Borneo. They were bold, adventurous sailors, slave traders and slave hunters and successfully terrorized the hill tribes. Indeed, they were greatly feared along the coast of Mindanao.
Early in the American occupation a treaty had been made with the Sultan of Sulu, who claimed the headship of Moros from the Island of Sulu northward to the great Island of Mindanao. In Mindanao there were different sultans who claimed headships in their own districts, and foremost amongst these was Datu Ali, who had waged a long and successful war with the Spaniards.
Here then was a difficult problem: to establish civil government among these wandering hill tribes, Filipino settlements, and piratical Mohammedan groups, each fearing and hating the other. General Wood's first task as he conceived it was to stop slave-trading and establish relations of tolerance, if not friendship, between the Filipinos and the Moros on the one hand and between the Moros and the hill tribes on the other; to stop the Christian Filipinos from imposing {188} on the hill tribes; and to begin some method for substituting respect for law and order, for government and authority in the place of terror and hatred. The ending of the slave trade resulted in many heavy, long-drawn-out fights with the principal Moro bands. The Sultan of Sulu had not lived up to the Bates Treaty and he had to be deposed, therefore, as a sovereign in Sulu.
The next step was to organize some form of government that would fit the situation. To start this Wood divided the entire Moro area, including the islands, into districts and appointed American officers of experience and ability as governors of the districts.
He then visited Borneo and studied carefully the laws and regulations under which that chartered colony governed the Malays within its borders. The policy laid down by him for the district governors was to stop slave-trading and the taking of life and property at once; to establish next friendly relations between the people living on the coast and the timid tribes up in the hills; to build up commerce on a fair basis; to open up trails and lines of communication between {189} villages; to assure to every one, no matter what his religion, a fair deal. He also laid great stress on the necessity of bringing the headmen of the different tribes into contact with the district governors and of doing all that could be done to build up and increase commerce.
At the same time the new and energetic Governor-General instituted a strong policy to stop forever the inhuman practices and customs highly repugnant to what Americans considered humane conduct. Every effort was made to insure better treatment of women, who up to that time had been nothing more nor less than chattels. On the seacoast trading stations were built and put in charge of men who spoke the dialect of the wild people. At these stations there was always a provincial agent who had authority to see that the hill people got fair prices for their products and just treatment from the Malays. Little by little as a result of this wise and sane policy they were all induced to come to the stations and make their head-quarters there during the trading period. In former times they had been accustomed to bring down their heavy loads of jungle products on their {190} shoulders and rather than stay in the neighborhood of the pirates over night they would sell their goods for anything they could get and hurry up into the hills again before dark. Moro, Filipino and Chinese traders had for centuries systematically robbed them. Money was of little use to them and therefore all trading was by barter. It was a long campaign of education which Wood instituted to build up confidence amongst these timid people, and he sent young American officers among them, traveling often-times hundreds of miles on foot and practically without any protection to help them and give them confidence.
Little by little confidence was built up; great peace meetings were arranged among the different tribes; old grudges were wiped out; scores were balanced and old feuds settled. It took time and brains and painstaking patience, but it was done and done well.
At the same time, taking a leaf from his own Cuban notebook, Wood started schools in the Filipino villages and took steps to do the same among the Moros. It was very difficult to {191} find teachers who would be received by these Moslems. It was at first almost impossible to get them to send their children to school at all. Nothing but time and sound, honest methods in dealing with these people made all or any of this possible.
Patrol boats were put on duty in the waters about the islands. Simultaneous with this building up went the organization of the customs service, since the province had to be entirely self-supporting. Native people from among the Moros and Filipinos were organized into what was called the constabulary. Every effort was made to turn the attention of the people from irregular and piratical activities to the activities of commerce. School laws were put in force, written in terms to meet the situation. Increased cultivation of new land, cultivation of cocoanuts, cocoa, and various local products, including hemp, was encouraged by exempting it from taxation provided certain amounts of useful crops were planted thereon.
Communications by land and water were built up as fast as possible. After a time taxation was {192} imposed very gradually in the form of a cedula, or poll tax. The money so collected was spent so far as possible in the district where it was collected. The headmen of the tribes and sub-tribes were made officials of the province and given a baldric bearing a brass shield with the seal of the province. In time they were given certain police authority for the maintenance of order. If the local headman could not handle the situation, the local constabulary was called in. If they in turn were not sufficient, then the troops were sent into the area.
A free man's life was worth fifty-two dollars and a half in gold; a male slave one-half this amount; a free woman was worth as much as a male slave; a female slave half as much as a male slave, and a modern rifle about two hundred dollars in gold.
As the simple processes of law came to be better understood natives were encouraged to appeal from the tribal to the district court, consisting of the district governor and the local priests or headmen, who advised the former upon tribal {193} customs and scales of punishment, in order that no injustice should be done to any one.
Gradually appeals were taken from the district courts to the regular insular courts, which were represented by itinerant judges of the first instance. The latter belonged to the regular Philippine judiciary and were at this time all Americans. Women were given equal status before the law and the rights of property were safeguarded.
After the first hard fighting the need for the use of troops gradually diminished and more and more of the policing work was done by the native constabulary. The wildest regions became practically safe.
After the districts were in working order municipalities and townships were established and the framework of civic organization begun. The Mohammedan religion was left undisturbed. Religious freedom was guaranteed to both Mohammedans and Christians. In addition to the Catholic missionaries who had been working there for hundreds of years, missionaries of other denominations commenced to take active interest in the situation. The revenue was sufficient to maintain {194} the province in good shape and there was a considerable amount of money in reserve.
Thus in three years, with the knowledge he had acquired in Cuba supplemented by his visits and study amongst the colonies of other nations where similar problems existed, with his extraordinary energy and capacity for working through innumerable subordinates, Leonard Wood again built up a community out of nothing but land and human beings. But in the Philippine instance he built up a community largely governing itself upon a system of laws still in force--though three governors have succeeded him--from a hopeless mass of Christian Filipinos, Chinese traders, Malay pirates, Mohammedans, cannibals and feudal tribes.
It was a remarkable instance of state building, which following upon the Cuban episodes, stands out as the greatest achievement any man has accomplished in Colonial history.
It is impossible to state the relative importance of this work without appearing to overdo it. Yet if we could but collect the tributes that have been paid to Wood upon its accomplishment they {195} would make a volume, Richard Olney wrote: "... to congratulate you personally on the most successful and deservedly successful career, whether as soldier or public man of any sort, that the Spanish War and its consequences have brought to the front." John Hay, then Secretary of State, wrote Wood a note "with sincere congratulations on the approaching fruition of all your splendid work for the regeneration of Cuba," and Senator Platt, of Connecticut, wrote of his "admiration for your administration under difficulties greater I think than have ever had to be encountered by any one man in reconstruction work." So the record of two statesmenlike and administrative works stands to this day as a witness of Wood's qualities.
In 1905 after a visit to the United States he returned to the islands and became commander-in-chief of the American forces in the Philippines, General Bliss taking his place as Governor of the Moros, who were now established under a basic form of government and procedure which Wood had inaugurated.
By 1908 this work was practically completed {196} and the procedure laid out for the future rule of that part of the Philippines. At that time General Wood was transferred to Governor's Island in New York Harbor as Commander of the Department of the East, strangely enough the first command he had held within the United States since the Geronimo days in the Southwest.
There followed in the next six years a diplomatic mission as special Ambassador to the Argentine Republic upon the occasion of the centenary of Argentina, where he met and talked with General von der Groltz, the German officer, who had so much to do with the Great War later. From this meeting Wood absorbed more of the necessity for universal military training and more of the aversion to a standing army such as existed in Germany. After this mission he became the head of the American military forces under the President of the United States and for four years held the position of Chief of Staff.
Thus beginning his army life in 1886 as an army surgeon he rose in twenty-two years to the highest position in the regular army that any one can hold. That, in a sense, closes a certain {197} period in General Wood's career. For when in 1914 he was again made Commander of the Department of the East he had already started upon his campaign of national preparation which had been growing and growing in his mind as he lived and served his own nation and observed and studied other nations. The knowledge he had acquired in the four quarters of the earth showed to him conclusively that a nation must be ready to resist attack in order to live in peace, and yet that that nation must not spend all its wealth and time and brains in building up a military machine. In a strange way the attitude of this New England "Mayflower" descendant resembled the attitude of his own native Cape Cod, which stands at the outposts of New England with its clenched fist ready and prepared, yet which lives on quietly in the lives of its inhabitants who proceed in peace with their commercial occupations and their family existence.
{198}
{199}
{200}
{201}
"There are many things man cannot buy and one of them is time. It takes time to organize and prepare. Time will only be found in periods of peace. Modern war gives no time for preparation. Its approach is that of the avalanche and not of the glacier.
"We must remember that this training is not a training for war alone. It really is a training for life, a training for citizenship in time of peace.
"We must remember that it is better to be prepared for war and not have it, then to have war and not to be prepared for it."
Such sentiments quoted from General Wood's many speeches and writings might be continued until they alone made a volume--a book of the Creed of the Patriot. For in his crusade up and down our land for the last six years he has developed an unsuspected ability for epigrammatic phraseology, for stating in concise, homely {202} language the principle that no one in any successful operation has failed to get ready. This was unsuspected in him, because up to 1913 he had had little to say outside of his official reports. His motto of doing the thing without talking about it had been followed to the letter by himself.
When he finally arrived at a position which was important and powerful enough to give him an opportunity for putting his beliefs into effect, when he furthermore arrived at a point where there was not the immediate necessity for feeding a starving people, or fighting a hostile military force, or reorganizing a tumbled-down state, or doing any of the things demanding immediate action with which he had been employed during most of his life--then with characteristic energy he did begin. Time could not be bought by him any more than it could be by others and his work of preparedness had to await a period of peace when the time was at hand. This period having arrived in 1912 and 1918 he found that in order to produce any impression, to get action upon this plan, he must not only have a high and powerful position but he must awaken the public {203} to its importance before he could expect legislative or departmental action. Hence the volume of the Creed of the Patriot.
With his accustomed energy therefore he started upon a campaign of writing, speaking and promoting in all ways open to him to bring this new plan before the people of this country and in doing so he developed the hitherto unsuspected qualities of a speaker of the highest, because the simplest and most homely order.
To him there was nothing new in the plan of preparedness for the nation. He might have said to himself in 1913: "I have found that in order to be a doctor a young man must study so many years; in order to fight Apache Indians successfully a man must train for a physical condition that permits him to walk and ride and live harder than his already trained opponents, that he must train soldiers for that particular job, must train and care for horses to cover that particular country. I have found by sad experience that to have a regiment of Rough Riders in proper condition to fight Spaniards in Cuba the men must be taught by long training to understand military principles, {204} subordination to military rule of procedure, the use of guns and animals and the laws and tactics of military action in the field; that these men must be taught to take care of themselves in the open, that ammunition and equipment must be at hand and in use. I have found that in order to produce order in a community where there is no order, health in a land where there is only sickness, happiness amongst a people where there is only misery and fear and worry--in order to do all this laws must be made and respected, people must learn that they owe something to their state and that they are responsible for honest care, administration and thoughtfulness of those who look to them as they look to their state. I have found that where nothing but force will do the trick, force must be prepared and ready in advance. I have seen innocent persons go under because they were not ready to offset depredations. I have seen nations injured and destroyed because they were not ready to resist force, whether that force were used in a just or an unjust cause. And now I have arrived at the place where I can prove this to a nation instead of to a military platoon, or a military staff, or a few Cuban or Philippine officials."
THE PATRIOT]
{205}
He might have said all this to himself--doubtless has done so many, many times with much more to the same effect--but the outcome is a witness of the fact that he has from a long and active life as fighter, soldier, organizer, administrator, diplomat and statesman in the West, the South, in Europe, in Asia, in Cuba, in the Philippines, in South America, in Washington--in most parts of the earth--learned again and again that nothing can be really done on the spur of the moment, that everybody must prepare from school days to death. And in 1913 he had his first real opportunity to preach this nationally to all the people of his own native land.
That within a year of that time prepared Germany should have upset the world and found the British Empire, the French Republic and the Italian Kingdom unprepared--to say nothing of the United States--may have been one of the accidents--strokes of fortune--that some people say have made General Wood. But it would seem that the only thing this Great War did in this {206} connection was to prove by a terrific example that Wood and those with him were right and that those who were against him were wrong.
If the war had not come, it would have taken longer to awaken this country to the facts and it would have delayed perhaps the growth of General Wood's name as that of a national and international character of highest importance. But it would not have changed the truth of his Creed--or rather the creed of which he has become the great protagonist. Nor does the fact that the war did come when it did give any ground for making Wood one of the greatest citizens of our country to-day because he preaches preparedness. General Wood stands at the forefront of the leaders in America at this time because of his own personal make-up and character and because of the amazing variety and extent of his services to his country which are written upon every page of its history during the last thirty years. It is the variety of things done which puts him in his present position, just as it is the variety of high qualities that has made the great men of all times great. King David was not only the greatest {207} general of his time. He was one of the greatest administrators of all time and perhaps the greatest poet that ever lived. Washington was not only a fighter of the highest order. He was one of the great generals of history; and a statesman and ruler of a higher order still.
It might very aptly be said, therefore, that General Wood's campaign for national preparedness was only the accomplishment of a task for which he had all his life been preparing himself.
Upon his return trip from the Philippines in 1908 he had come by the way of Europe studying always military systems. There was a short stop in Ceylon, in Singapore, in Egypt, in Malta and Gibraltar and a summer spent in Switzerland, ostensibly for health recuperation after the tropical life in Moroland and Manila, At the same time this gave opportunity for a closer study of the Swiss system which with an admixture of the Australian system furnished the basis for the training camps afterwards inaugurated by him here.
At the same time he had the opportunity by invitation of seeing the German and French {208} armies mobilized at the time of the Bosnia-Herzegovina episode when all Europe was on the verge of war. The German army of maneuver was at Saarbrücken--ready. Practically the whole of the French army of maneuver was on the Loire--ready. He saw one immediately after the other--less than two days apart. Mr. White, then American Ambassador to France, asked him what he thought of the French army and his answer was that despite the fame of the German military machine France in the next war would surprise the world by the fitting effectiveness of her forces. He based this conclusion on the relation of officers and men and the discipline founded on respect and confidence rather than fear of officers.
Then followed the centenary mission to the Argentine and a couple of years as Chief of Staff of the American army before he could effectively begin his campaign.
The first gun was a letter sent out by Wood under permission of the Secretary of War which proposed to many presidents of colleges and universities in the United States the establishment of several experimental military training camps {209} for students. These camps were to be placed one on the historic field of Gettysburg and the other at the Presidio of Monterey, California. The former opened on July 7th and closed on August 15th, and the latter extended from July 1st to August 8th. In all 222 students took this training, 159 at Gettysburg and 68 in Monterey.
It was the first trial, and it was a very small and insignificant response. Indeed it gives a good idea of the importance in which military preparedness was held in this country at that moment-- 100,000,000 inhabitants; 222 volunteers.
Those were the days when the people of this land and many others were hard at work upon commercial pursuits and when for amusement the world and his wife danced tango to ragtime music. So-called alarmists cried "Look out for war!" Major Du Maurier of the British army wrote a play called "An Englishman's Home," which startled and puzzled Englishmen for a while, but could not carry an audience for one week in this country. Nobody took any interest in what his neighbor was doing, to say nothing of what Germany or any other countries were planning.
{210}
Yet Wood was not discouraged. He was started on a long campaign and he knew he had to prepare to prepare. Furthermore the men in the universities who could see ahead came forward in his support and in support of the idea. Four years later President Drinker of Lehigh University wrote of the amazing success of the movement: "We owe it largely to Major-General Wood's farsightedness as a man of affairs and to his great qualities as a soldier and patriot, that our country was awakened to the need of preparedness, and this beginning of military training in our youth was due wholly to his initiative." [Footnote:National Service Magazine.]
Small as the beginning was it was a plant with the germ of strength in it, since at this first camp in Gettysburg the members formed then in 1913 the Society of the National Reserve Corps of the United States. Wood at once cooperated with this slender offshoot and gave it all the support in his power. He sent letters as Chief of Staff of the Regular Army to college presidents at the same time that the president of the new Corps did so--both suggesting an advisory committee to {211} assist the government in the encouragement and practical advancement of the training camp idea. This committee was formed and Presidents Hibben of Princeton and Drinker of Lehigh were elected president and secretary. The committee with these officers in charge gave assistance to Wood in his organizing work so that out of the small beginnings in the two camps an enormous organization arose which trained tens of thousands of young men to be officers and made the immense expansion of the little American army to 4,000,000 soldiers possible.
Pushing always quietly but unremittingly ahead Wood helped these officers to increase the camps from two to four in the summer of 1914--in Vermont, Michigan, North Carolina and California--with a total attendance of 667 students.
Then came the Great War and the beginning of the work on a large scale. From college students, who reported on the interest and pleasure which they got out of the summer camp, the life in the open and the military instruction afforded by regular army men, the movement extended to business men, lawyers, preachers and so on. Wood {212} opened the Plattsburg camp on Lake Champlain to the latter and started the first business man's camp. Each man paid his own railway fares, his own living expenses while in camp and bought his uniform and equipment, except arms, with his own money.
That year (1915) 3,406 men attended the five camps. In 1916 six camps were opened and 16,139 men attended them. At the close of the first Plattsburg camp the business men formed an organization for furthering and extending this training just as the college men had done at Gettysburg two years before. And in 1916 these two organizations consolidated and organized the present Military Training Camps Association of the United States.
All through this period, taking advantage of the European war, drawing lessons from the tragic happenings just across the Atlantic, Wood went about the country, as little "Bobs" of Kandahar had previously done in England, speaking in halls, in camps, in churches, at clubs, at festivals, on special and unspecial occasions of all kinds. He drove home the subject which he knew so well and others knew hardly at all. He met all comers of {213} every grade in arguments and debates--those who were constitutional objectors, pacifists, people who thought arbitration much more effective, people too proud to fight or too busy to get ready--all comers of all kinds. And the Great War day by day helped him. He spent his summers going from one camp to another, traveling all over the United States.
At six in the morning he would appear in one of them ready for inspection, and any day anywhere where there was a camp one might see him in the early morning sunshine, or the early morning rain striding up one company street and down another followed by new and old officers, peering into this dog tent and that kitchen, examining this man's rifle and that man's kit, praising, criticizing and jamming enthusiasm in two hours into a group of a thousand men in a manner they knew not how, nor clearly understood. It was just what he had done in Cuba, just what he had done in the Philippines where he had organized drilling, athletic and condition-of-equipment competitions in each company, each regiment, each brigade, each division--one pitted against another, all at it hot and heavy; {214} not because Wood came along and looked them over, but because when he did look them over he could spot any weakness in any part of the work with unerring certainty--not alone because he could spot any weakness, but because he knew a good point when he saw it and gave credit where credit was due.
It is perhaps not out of place here to look back in the light of events which occurred afterwards and are now a part of history and secure an estimate of what this work did for this country in awakening the people to a sense of the critical situation, to prepare an army which should do its part in the world war, to bring that army into line in France at what seems to have been a critical moment and to help bring the war itself to a successful conclusion in conjunction with the Allied armies which had held on so long against such terrific odds.
The purpose of the camps and what they will lead to in time of peace and did lead to in time of war is perhaps best shown in one of General Wood's statements: "The ultimate object sought is not in any way one of military aggrandizement, {215} but to provide in some degree a means of meeting a vital need confronting us as a peaceful and unmilitary people, in order to preserve the desired peace and prosperity through the only safe precaution, viz.: more thorough preparation and equipment to resist any effort to break the peace."
That at a time when there was no European War in sight.
Now consider General Pershing's report of Nov. 21, 1918--after the close of the war. The first American air force using American aeroplanes went into action in France, that is to say in the war, in August, 1918--16 months after the declaration of war by the United States and four years after the beginning of the war itself. During the entire time that the United States was in the war, a little over 19 months, not one single American field gun was fired at the enemy and only 109 had been received in Europe at all. No American tank was ever used against the enemy in the whole war. Yet a month or six weeks after the declaration of war troops began to go to Europe and at its close in November, 1918, the army {216} consisted of 3,700,000 men, of whom more than 203,000 were newly made officers. Half of this force at least got over to the other side of the Atlantic and at least half of them took part in the fighting at one time or another of the 19 months.
One would have said at the outset that a commercial nation like the United States, filled with factories, mechanics and mechanically inclined brains, could and would have made guns and aeroplanes and uniforms far quicker than it made soldiers and officers. Yet such was not the case.
A French officer here in America at that time studying American mobilization said:
"I knew you recruited over 3,500,000 men in 19 months. That is very good, but not so difficult. But I am told also that although you had no officers reserve to start with you somehow found 200,000 new officers, most of them competent. That is what is astonishing and what was impossible. Tell me how that was done." [Footnote:National Magazine.]
There is only the one answer, that the officers' training camps started in 1918 by Leonard Wood and fostered by him and the people of this nation {217} who then and later agreed with him made the impossible possible and made the new, raw army effective and in time. It was what came to be known as the "Plattsburg Idea;" which, getting really going first in May 16, 1917, as a regular part of the United States mobilization, did its work before arms and ammunition were ready, before uniforms could be had, before camps had been even laid out and before the first draft had been taken. At that time 40,000 selected men were in training for officers' positions in sixteen camps. That is to say, in 40 days 150,000 applications had been received, 100,000 men examined and 40,000 passed as fit and ready for training.
It was the work in 1913, 1914, 1915 and 1916. It was the Plattsburg idea adapted to war conditions. Without it the situation regarding men might easily have been the same as the situation regarding guns, aeroplanes and uniforms.
Plattsburg, being in New York State, naturally became the type of camp, since in 1914 Wood, having been relieved of his position as Chief of Staff, was detailed to command the Department of the East with his headquarters on Governor's {218} Island in New York Harbor. He no sooner took up this new work than the Department of the East, where fifty-six per cent, of the National Guard of the whole country was included, became a seething office of energy and work. In so far as the training camp idea went this energy was centered in Plattsburg.
At the same time General Wood inaugurated the Massachusetts National Guard Maneuvers--the first of their kind held in this country--and added a water attack on Boston. He also assisted Governor Whitman in putting through the New York State Legislature the bills creating the State Military Training Commission, under whose management all boys between the ages of sixteen and eighteen undergo a simple but effective training in the rudiments of military tactics and receive the athletic training of a short camp life each year--all involving the inculcation of the principles of discipline, of order and of self care.
Thus the history of the way in which the Government of the United States, when war was eventually declared, secured its officers is told. {219} One might go into detail, but the main facts are not altered by any amount of detail. They stand out clearly--the awakening of our land in time by the energy and patriotic spirit of one man, supplemented by the untold amount of work accomplished at his suggestion by thousands of patriotic American citizens.
And in the midst of this work before war was declared General Wood, as a part of his plan of preparedness, asked some ten or twelve men to come to Plattsburg at different times to speak to the student officers. Among these men he included the two living ex-presidents of the United States--Mr. Taft and Colonel Roosevelt. He first submitted the list of speakers to the War Department so that the Department might eliminate any one of them who for any reason should appear to be undesirable.
After two weeks, having had no reply, he sent out the invitations and from time to time these speakers came and addressed the members of the different camps.
Roosevelt on his arrival at Plattsburg handed to Wood the speech he proposed to deliver; and {220} in view of the known critical attitude which the former took towards the administration Wood asked two other army officers to go over the proposed speech with him and help him to eliminate anything which might be questioned upon such an occasion. The address was delivered at about five o'clock in the afternoon at the camp and when it was finished Roosevelt was heartily congratulated personally by many men of both political parties, among them two distinguished Democrats--John Mitchel, Mayor of New York, and Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York.
After dinner Roosevelt left in the evening to go into the city of Plattsburg, a mile or two away from the camp, to take the midnight train for New York. As he stood on the platform of the railway station some time after eleven in the evening he was interviewed by the newspaper reporters. No military person was present. What he said was given out on territory not under military jurisdiction and it had nothing to do with the Plattsburg speech. Roosevelt spoke to the newspaper men in his usual forcible fashion:
"In the course of his speech he remarked that {221} for thirteen months the United States had played an ignoble part among the nations, had tamely submitted to seeing the weak, whom we had covenanted to protect, wronged; had seen our men, women and children murdered on the high seas 'without action on our part,' and had used elocution as a substitute for action. 'Reliance upon high sounding words unbacked by deeds,' said he, 'is proof of a mind that dwells only in the realm of shadow and of sham.' Under the Hague Convention it was our duty to prevent, and, if not to prevent, then to undo, the hideous wrong that was done in Belgium, but we had shirked this duty. He denounced hyphenated Americans, professional pacifists and those who would substitute arbitration treaties for an army, or the platitudes of peace congresses for military preparedness."
The next day Wood received a telegraphic reprimand from the Government in Washington. "In this telegram of disapproval. Secretary Garrison said it was difficult to conceive of anything which could have a more detrimental effect than such an incident. The camp, held under the {222} Government auspices, was conveying its own impressive lesson in its practical and successful operation and results. 'No opportunity should have been furnished to any one to present to the men any matter except that which was essential to the necessary training they were to receive. Anything else could only have the effect of distracting attention from the real nature of the experiment, diverting consideration to issues which excite controversy, antagonism and ill-feeling, and thereby impairing, if not destroying, what otherwise would have been so effective.' General Wood replied, as follows: 'Your telegram received, and the policy laid down will be rigidly adhered to.'" [Footnote:The Independent.]