Part 7

An interesting result of this work of Wood's in regard to the settlement of the religious questions of the Island came later on when he was starting on his way to take up his work in the Philippines in the form of a delegation of Church authorities headed by Archbishop Jones. This delegation came to General Wood to say that its members proposed to approach the President of the United States and suggest that Wood be given the same authority to represent church matters in the Philippines as he had had in Cuba. They added that if this were done, they would give him full power to represent the Catholic Church as a referee and confer upon him the power not only to recommend action in all matters, but to settle all matters for the Church himself.

It is very doubtful if such authority has many times in history been given to a Protestant by the {155} Church of Rome, and it marks the extraordinary height to which Wood's ability had lifted him in the world at large.

It is hardly to be wondered at that Theodore Roosevelt wrote at the time: "Leonard Wood four years ago went down to Cuba, has served there ever since, has rendered services to that country of the kind which if performed three thousand years ago would have made him a hero mixed up with the sun god in various ways; a man who devoted his whole life through those four years, who thought of nothing else, did nothing else, save to try to bring up the standard of political and social life in that Island, to teach the people after four centuries of misrule that there were such things as governmental righteousness and honesty and fair play for all men on their merits as men."

[Footnote: _Harvard Graduates' Magazine_.]

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THE STATESMAN

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VII

THE STATESMAN

Meantime, while Wood was carrying on his work in Cuba, events of importance to him and to his country were taking place in the United States. The popularity of his war record had made Roosevelt Governor of New York, and when the time came for him to run for a second term the Republican organization of the state forced him to take the nomination for Vice-President of the United States in order to keep him out of the gubernatorial field. He objected strongly and tried to remain in the state fight, but at the convention in Philadelphia upon a certain momentous occasion Thomas Platt, then head, of the state and national Republican organization, is said to have remarked to him:

"Mr. Roosevelt, if you do not desire the vice-presidential nomination, there is always the alternative of retirement to private life."

In other words party machinery was too strong {160} for him and much against his will he was forced to run as second on the McKinley-Roosevelt presidential ticket.

The Republicans were successful and Roosevelt, knowing that there was little for him to do in Washington, was planning an extended trip through the Southern states to make an exhaustive study of the negro question. He had indeed begun to accumulate material on this subject when on September 6, 1901, McKinley was shot at Buffalo. A few days later he died; and Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States.

For Wood this meant much in the future--much of good and something of trouble. Roosevelt was his devoted friend and supporter, and upon his return to the United States in early 1902 he found this devoted friend the head of the nation, himself a Brigadier-General of the regular army scheduled to go into regular army work and to live on an army officer's pay. In this country there is no other procedure possible. In England such a man would have been given a title and a large sum of money to make it possible for him to keep up the position which a man of his abilities and {161} attainments should keep up. Here the case is different.

He had the alternative of going on, or retiring and entering commercial pursuits. Offers looking towards the latter contingency were not wanting. He was, in fact, asked to take a business position, which offered him forty thousand a year. Here was a large income for a man of forty-two, regular work of an interesting sort, security and a clear future for himself and his family. Instead, he accepted the appointment to the Philippines which meant and indeed, as the outcome showed, actually involved more than a hundred military engagements amongst the natives of the islands in many of which he risked his life.

Here again he took the road of service to his country as he had each time the ways divided since the day when as a young doctor he entered the army. No one but he himself can tell in detail just the reasons which led to this decision, but in the main they were the instinctive desire for action, for execution and for the open road, which then as now swayed him in all his actions and decisions. Then, too, he felt that since {162} Roosevelt was President, criticisms of their relations in political circles might readily arise, as indeed did occur later; and lest their friendship should be misunderstood he took the Philippine appointment--applied for it, even--in order that being thus out of the country, cause for any such occurrences might perhaps be avoided.

It is always interesting to look back through the career of such a man and speculate on the chance or wise decision which caused the choice of the right road or the left road at such a time. Neither Wood nor Roosevelt could possibly know or foresee that this decision would furnish the former with the material which eventually led to his doing more than all the rest of the United States put together to start preparation for the Great War. Neither of them could have guessed that his administration in the Philippines would bring out further qualities in Wood which showed the statesman as well as the administrator in him.

What might have happened otherwise is again a futile speculation--perhaps something to bring him still more before the people of his country, perhaps less--yet it may be safely said, judging {163} from history and biography the world over, that it is probable no road he might have taken would have suppressed Leonard Wood's executive and administrative qualities. Indeed the fact that for practically thirty years he has been in the army, that he is a soldier in every inch of his big body, has never even to this day made him a militarist. He is and always has been an administrator; and that quality with all that it means would in all likelihood have cropped out in whatever profession he might have chosen or been forced into by circumstances.

Men of ability are doubtless occasionally kept down; but not as a rule. They rise to the occasion. And conversely men of small minds, dreamers and theorists looking to the settlement of all problems on the instant seldom last long at the top although they rise to prominence here and there in times of excitement and hysteria such as we are passing through to-day. It is only the sound common sense of humanity coupled with great ability that stands the test. It is only they who keep ever before them the fact that {164} elemental laws do not change, cannot be changed, who stand the test and strain of emergency.

The entire world since the Great War is filled with new theories, new plans, new outlooks for all of us. We cannot go back to the old status. Yet because we cannot go back there would seem to be no reason for our going mad. The wall paper has changed--must change. New decorations with wonderful and to American ears unpronounceable names have been displayed before the eyes of Europe and America by the advanced architects of the day. But that individual--not to mention nations--who becomes fascinated with the new colors and designs will suffer horribly in the end if, having forgotten to look to the beams of his house, he finds it shortly tumbling about his ears. Sane vision, clear thinking at critical times has saved and will save many times again those who would fall but for such guidance.

To-day in this land such men are needed. They must come forward, not in haste or with sudden panaceas, but with the same old sound common sense which has made us what we are and will keep {165} us from becoming what parts of the rest of the world have already become.

In 1902 the situation, while not as acute as to-day, had nevertheless its problems to be solved; and though we had just finished what in the light of history was a short and almost insignificant war the country was startled from end to end by the discovery of its unpreparedness. As has already been said our amazing lack of men and equipment for any such occasion had been impressed upon Wood's mind by personal experience and by his own native instinct for the reverse.

It was of great interest to him, therefore, to receive shortly the appointment to visit Germany as an American military observer of the German Army maneuvers. And out of this trip he learned more thoroughly the lack of foresight in military matters in this country and saw more clearly the position which we should be in, if such a machine as the German Army were pitted against us instead of the weak and decayed forces of Spain.

In the course of these maneuvers he met many of the greatest military men of Europe. He was received and entertained by the German Emperor {166} not only because of his position in the American army and as the representative of the United States, but as the man who in Cuba had treated with such kindness and courtesy German officers of a visiting training ship who were ill with the Island fevers. He witnessed the grand maneuvers of the greatest army the world has ever known. But, what in his own belief was of far more importance, he met and talked with European military experts of world-wide reputation.

Among these men the most congenial spirit was Lord Roberts. The little man of Kandahar, the great fighter of Britain's battles, the idol of the British public, was then striving to awaken the English people and the English government to their own unpreparedness. He sought even then to show them what an attack by a force like the German Army would mean to the British Empire. For years he kept at it, lecturing, speaking, crying aloud throughout England up to the very day when without warning in 1914 his countrymen found themselves with a scant two hundred thousand soldiers confronted by five millions of trained Germans.

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The great fighter, the great preacher, his little body filled with patriotism and a great heart, unbosomed to Wood and met a responsive assent in Wood's own nature. They discussed from all sides the right thing to do. They went over all the European systems together with the desire in their hearts to find something which should at the same time give a nation a force of great size that could be quickly put into action and still not turn that nation into a huge military machine. Neither of them was a militarist. Both felt that peace was best preserved by the power to preserve it.

Together they seem to have arrived at some adaptation of the Swiss system which provides that small country with a relatively enormous military force without causing the citizens to give up their commercial pursuits. At that time it is probable that Wood began to formulate the idea of universal military training of all male citizens between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one while they were finishing school and college and before they had settled upon their life work.

At all events the material upon the subject {168} which he managed to accumulate in the way of books, pamphlets, records and so on constitutes now one of the main portions of his extensive library. And the whole trip was an example in his case of what a man can do incidentally--or apparently incidentally--while occupied ostensibly with some other work. During his stay in Europe he met many statesmen in Germany, France and England and absorbed from them all he could on the subject that was fast becoming his greatest interest.

Upon his return to the United States the difficulties which Taft, the Governor of the Philippine Islands, was having in trying to bring order amongst the Moro, or Moslem, Islands and the half savage tribes which inhabited them led President Roosevelt to consider the advisability of sending some one to undertake this difficult and dangerous task. Speaking of it to Wood one day the latter said:

"Why not send me?"

Roosevelt immediately referred him to Mr. Root, then Secretary of War, with the result that he was appointed Governor of Moro Province to do {169} the work there amongst these new wards of the United States under different conditions which he had already done in Cuba.

Wood felt very strongly that it would be far better for him to be there during the administration of Roosevelt in order that their personal relationship might not be misunderstood. This was the more forcibly brought in upon his consciousness by the occurrence at that time of what is known as the Rathbone affair.

Major Estes G. Rathbone, formerly an assistant postmaster-general and at this time detailed to duties in the newly organized Post Office in Cuba, had been charged with wastefulness of public moneys and unwarranted expenditure of public funds for personal expenses. He, with certain associates, was brought to trial and convicted. He was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. It was one of the few cases of malfeasance in office which occurred in Cuba during Wood's administration and was dealt with by the regular courts in the regular manner.

Nothing further would have come of it in all probability had not the extraordinarily close {170} relations of Wood and Roosevelt furnished an excuse. The fact that Roosevelt was President of the United States and that as such he proposed the name of Wood for advancement to Major-General of Regulars from Brigadier-General added fuel to the flames. The fact that Wood was the senior Brigadier and that as such he would naturally become Major-General in regular seniority seems to have carried no weight at the time. Even then the Rathbone affair would have had no connection with the matter of this appointment had not Major Rathbone possessed personal friends high politically in the government of the time, and had not the regular army officers looked with disfavor upon the appointment even in regular order of a man who had been an army surgeon and who was not what is known as a line officer originally.

All these influences, however, coming together at the same time caused an uproar in Congress over his appointment which, while it cleared Wood entirely, still made a political scandal that hurt to the quick the man who had just accomplished what he had accomplished in Cuba.

Wood was charged with conduct unbecoming {171} an officer; that he made an intimate friend of an ex-convict in Santiago, and employed him as a newspaper correspondent to blacken the character of eminent American officers and advertise himself; that Rathbone was unjustly accused and convicted through Wood's direct agency; that Wood had been guilty of extravagance; that he had accepted while Governor-General presents from a gambling house in Havana, and so on.

All this evidence and much more was laid before the Committee of the Senate on Military Affairs and was most thoroughly aired. The result was the absolute vindication of Wood, his confirmation as Major-General of the Regular Army and a report which is a part of the records of the Senate in which it is written that:... "not one of them has a better claim, by reason of his past record and experience as a commander, than has General Wood; and in the opinion of the Committee no one has in view of his present rank equal claim to his on the ground of merit measured by the considerations suggested."

The whole episode thus ended in still greater credit to General Wood. It is only interesting {172} and in point here and now because it brings out the fact that the man himself never had the support of the Washington Army Department men until his service in the Philippines, except here and there amongst those officers who have served under him. Doubtless his extraordinary executive work in getting the Rough Riders ready for action and his methods which over-rode precedents and destroyed red tape throughout the whole of the War Department of that day had much to do with this. That there should follow in so few months his remarkable success in Santiago, his appointment as Governor-General of Cuba, his quick and successful organization and administration of the Island so that it could be turned over to the Cubans in such short order--all tended to fan the flames of prejudice. Hence when the opportunity of the Rathbone affair occurred the flames became a veritable conflagration, which, however, burned only those who brought the charges and touched the character of Wood himself not at all.

In the meantime early in 1903 he started upon his duties in the Philippines. Instead of proceeding by the usual route through California and {173} over the Pacific to Manila, Wood decided to make the voyage the other way round with a definite plan for acquiring data upon his new subject and relative to his new duties as he went along.

In Egypt he spent some time with Lord Cromer, then just preparing to give up his work there as Viceroy. Cromer, like all other persons in executive capacities throughout the world, knew well all that General Wood had done in Cuba. He had a very high appreciation of what had been accomplished in the time, because from his own experience he knew better than most men what the difficulties had been. He took a great liking for the quiet, stalwart American and told him that his administration in Cuba was one of the finest in Colonial history and the best in our generation. Later when Lord Cromer was asked to suggest some one to succeed himself in Egypt he said that unfortunately the best man was unavailable since he was an American citizen named Leonard Wood.

He gave him all the facilities for studying the government and administration of the British protectorate and helped him wherever and {174} whenever he could. Wood's great interest was the study of the way in which men of different and conflicting religious beliefs were handled, and he collected large quantities of books and documents to be studied later as he proceeded eastward. No man could have asked for higher appreciation than was accorded him voluntarily by the able and experienced administrator of Egyptian affairs.

From Cairo he proceeded to India and spent sufficient time to accumulate information there. He was to govern a Mohammedan population mixed up with Confucians, cannibals, headhunters and religions of twenty different varieties, and he studied as he went along all the methods employed in similar situations to preserve order without creating religious wars.

He even made a special journey to Java at the invitation of the Dutch government, where the Dutch governor gave him all the assistance in his power. Here he found the problem more closely allied to his own than elsewhere.

So that on his arrival in Manila he had gathered information upon most of the problems which would shortly confront him from sources {175} of unquestioned authenticity and from men of unquestioned ability. Some friend one night in Manila spoke of the large number of books that filled the walls of his house and wondered when he expected to get time to read them. Wood's answer was that he had read them all and only used them now as reference books to refresh his memory.

New as the problems were, therefore, he had by the time he began active work as Governor whatever preparation any one could secure for the work in hand.

The Spaniards had failed in their government in the Philippines as they had elsewhere. In Mindanao and Sulu--the country, or islands, inhabited by the Moros--they had failed signally because of their intolerance of the religious beliefs of the people and their careless impatience generally towards a colony which from its very nature could not produce much money. Furthermore they did not send sufficient military forces or sufficiently able officers to maintain their supremacy. And finally they did not deal with the people through the native clergy and priests. Consequently when the Americans came in the Moros were united only {176} in their hatred of the white race, placed no confidence in anything their rulers told them and only obeyed white-man-made laws as long as the white man was in sight.

After all a sultan or datu had his position and authority which had come down to him through generations and his religion which had been taught him from birth. He saw no reason why he should give up these without a struggle just because some other man arrived with a different religion and a different form of sultan government. The country was such that it was easy to avoid the new rulers. Transportation over large parts of the southern islands was through jungle and pathless forests where even riding a horse was impossible. Streams without bridges, settlements without approaches except a trail, tropical climates to which only the Moros themselves were accustomed spread over a land of almost impenetrable jungle. The Moros themselves understood such a situation and could easily move from one spot to another, one island to another, one settlement to another; while the army had to fight its way in and then fight its way out again.

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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."