D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1920 Copyright 1919 by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of America TO GENERAL LEONARD WOOD By Corinne Roosevelt Robinson...

In these days immediately following the Great War it is well upon beginning anything--even a modest biographical sketch--to consider a few elementals and distinguish them from the changing unessentials, to keep a sound basis of sense and not be led into hysteria, to look carefully again at the beams of our house and not be deceived into thinking that the plaster and the wall paper are the supports of the building. Let us consider a few of these elementals that apply to the subject in hand as wel

The problem was what turned out to be the last of the Indian fighting, involving a long-drawn-out campaign. For over a hundred years, as every one knows, the unequal struggle of two races for this continent had been in progress and the history of it is the ever tragic story of the survival of the fittest. No one can read it without regret at the destruction, the extermination, of a race. No one, however, can for a moment hesitate in his judgment of the inevitableness of it, since it is and alway

Chance no doubt at times plays an important part in the making of a man. Yet perhaps Cassias' remark, through the medium of Shakespeare, that "The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings," has the truer ring. Chance no doubt comes to all of us again and again, but it is the brain that takes the chance which deserves the credit and not the accidental event, opportunity or occasion offering. It was not chance that sent Leonard Wood to Arizona to fight Indians. It was the

The name "Rough Riders" will forever mean to those who read American history the spontaneous joy of patriotism and the high hearts of youth in this land. It was the modern reality of the adventurous musketeers--of those who loved romance and who were ready for a call to arms in support of their country. They came from the cowboys of the west, from the stockbrokers' offices of Wall Street, from the athletic field, from youth wherever real youth was to be found. Something over 20,000 men applied f

To understand the work accomplished by Wood in Santiago, it is necessary to renew our picture of the situation existing in Cuba at the time and to realize as this is done that the problem was an absolutely new one for the young officer of thirty-seven to whom it was presented. Nobody can really conceive of the unbelievable condition of affairs unless he actually saw it or has at some time in his life witnessed a corresponding situation. Those who return from the battlefields on the Western Front

It has been said that General Wood's work in Havana as Governor-General of Cuba was the continuation of his work at Santiago on a larger scale. This would seem to be erroneous. The Santiago problem was the cleaning and reorganizing of a city of 60,000 inhabitants. Many stringent measures could properly be put into operation in such a community which were quite impossible in a city of 350,000 inhabitants like Havana, or in a state of two and one-half million people such as the Island of Cuba. It

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,

"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

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

{256} {257} 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