The Career of Leonard Wood Part 5

The city was divided into districts and numbers of medical men put in charge, their duty being to examine each house and report sanitary conditions, sickness and food situations. As a result of these reports Wood issued orders for action in each district so that the food, the available medical force and the supplies of all kinds should be used and distributed to produce the greatest results in the shortest possible time. In one district alone just outside the city there were thousands of cases of smallpox in November. The streets were filled with filth and dead and wrecked furniture. The wells were full of refuse. The task seemed almost hopeless. Yet, under Wood's system of detailing squads to undertake the work in certain sections {114} with the system of centralized reporting, the epidemic was checked in a month, the district cleaned and scrubbed from end to end with disinfectants and the small pox cut down to a few scattering cases. In this district of Holguin the plan was adopted of vaccinating two battalions of the Second Immune Regiment. These men were then sent into the district to establish good sanitary conditions and clean up the yellow fever. The work was done successfully without the occurrence of a single case of smallpox amongst the American troops.

No better demonstration of the efficacy of vaccination was ever given.

Thus the first task of feeding the starving population and cleaning the city was simultaneously undertaken by districts under the direction of officers having authority to proceed along certain established lines. Episodes ill.u.s.trating these "established lines" are many, but there is s.p.a.ce here, for only one or two of them.

It developed at the outset that there was food and meat in the city which the people could use, but which was beyond their reach on account of the high prices. General Wood no sooner heard {115} of this than he "established a line of procedure" to correct it. He sent for the princ.i.p.al butchers of the city and asked:

"How much do you charge for your meat?"

"Ninety cents a pound, Senor."

"What does it cost you?"

There was hesitation and a shuffling of feet; then one of the men said in a whining voice:

"Meat is very, very dear, your Excellency."

"How much a pound?"

"It costs us very much, and ..."

"How much a pound?"

"Fifteen cents, your Excellency; but we have lost much money during the war and..."

"So have your customers. Now meat will be sold at 25 cents a pound, and not one cent more. Do you understand?"

Then, turning to the alderman, he charged him to see that his order was carried out to the letter, unless he wanted to be expelled from office.

Thenceforward meat was sold in the markets at 25 cents. The same simple plan was evolved for all other kinds of supplies. Naturally such high-handed methods caused a great hue and cry {116} amongst certain of the citizens and no such method could have been carried out by any one but a military commander with absolute authority. Some of the newspapers, all of which had been given a free hand by Wood and were allowed for the first time to say what they liked, started a campaign against the new administration and its busy head. But hand in hand with this autocratic procedure went the organization of native courts, the appointment of native officials for carrying on the government, native police to catch Cuban bandits and native judges to give decisions and impose sentences. Furthermore, in these same days of autocratic action, the people gradually discovered that although everybody was forced to work all those who did got paid--something new to the Santiago-Cuban consciousness--that the invading American army was not arresting natives in the streets and thrusting them into jail, but that their own native police were doing this work. Gradually, as the city became clean, as prices fell, as payment for work came in, as illness decreased, as law became fairly administered by the Cuban officials themselves, a certain awe {117} and veneration grew for the invaders and their big, hardworking head. It was a revelation, unbelievable yet true, unknown yet a fact, which opened up to the minds of these long-suffering, incompetent people the first vision of an existence which has since through the same agency of General Wood become a fact throughout the whole island, so that Cuba is to-day a busy, healthy, self-governing state.

Parallel with the feeding and sanitation work General Wood put into effect a certain system of road building where it was necessary in order to keep the people at work and allow them to make money and at the same time to produce necessary transportation facilities. Five miles of asphalt pavement, fifteen miles of country pike, six miles of macadam were built and 200 miles of country road made usable out of funds collected from the regular taxes which had heretofore gone into the pockets of the Spanish government officials. The costs varied somewhat from the old days, as may well be guessed. A quarter of a mile of macadam pavement built by the Spaniards the year before along the water-front had cost $180,000. Wood's {118} engineers built five miles of asphalt pavement at a cost of $175,000.

At the same time a reorganization of the Custom House service was inst.i.tuted which increased receipts; jails and hospitals were reorganized under the system existing in the United States; and perhaps in the end the greatest work of all was the establishment of an entirely new school system based on an adaptation of the American form. Teachers had disappeared. There were none, since n.o.body paid them. School houses were empty, open to any tramp for a night's lodging. In a few months this was changed so that kindergartens and schools were opened and running.

In fact the work was the making of a new community, the building of a new life--the repairing of the tottering wing of the old, old house.

All this, as may be supposed, did not take place without friction, obstruction, and without at first a great deal of bad blood.

Wood's methods in dealing with disturbances were his own and can only be suggested here by isolated anecdotes and incidents. When an official who had the Spanish methods in his blood {119} did not appear after three invitations he was carried into the commanding officer's presence by a squad of soldiers in his pajamas. The next time he was invited he came at once.

"One night about eight o'clock, General Wood was writing in his office in the palace. At the outer door stood a solitary sentinel, armed with a rifle. Suddenly there burst across the plaza, from the San Carlos Club, a mob of Cubans--probably 600. Within a few minutes a shower of stones, bricks, bottles and other missiles struck the Spanish Club, smashing windows and doors. A man, hatless and out of breath, rushed up to the sentry at the palace entrance and shouted, 'Where's the General? Quick! The Cubans are trying to kill the officers and men in the Spanish Club!'

"General Wood was leisurely folding up his papers when the sentry reached him. 'I know it,' he said, before the man had time to speak.

'I have heard the row. We will go over and stop it.'

"He picked up his riding-whip, the only weapon he ever carries, and, accompanied by the one American soldier, strolled across to the scene of {120} the trouble. The people in the Spanish Club had got it pretty well closed up, but the excited Cubans were still before it, throwing things and shouting imprecations, and even trying to force a way in by the main entrance.

"'Just shove them back, sentry,' said General Wood, quietly.

"Around swung the rifle, and, in much less time than is taken in the telling, a way was cleared in front of the door.

"'Now shoot the first man who places his foot upon that step,' added the General, in his usual deliberate manner. Then he turned and strolled back to the palace and his writing. Within an hour the mob had dispersed, subdued by two men, one rifle and a riding-whip. And the lesson is still kept in good memory."

"One day about the middle of November the native _calentura_ or fever, from which General Wood suffered greatly, sent him to his home, which is on the edge of the town, earlier than usual. He had no sooner reached the house than he was notified by telephone that a b.l.o.o.d.y riot had occurred at San Luis, a town 20 miles out on the {121} Santiago Railway. The fever was raging in the General, his temperature exceeding 105, and he was so sick and dizzy that he staggered as he walked. But with that indomitable will that had served him on many a night raid against hostile Apaches, he entered his carriage and was driven back to the city. He picked up his chief signal officer, Captain J. E. Brady, at the Palace and hastened to the building occupied by the telegraph department of the Signal Corps on Calle Enramadas. Captain Brady took the key at the instrument.

"'Tell the operator to summon members of the rural guard who were fired on, and the commanding officer of the Ninth Immunes,' ordered the General, tersely. Thenceforward, for three hours General Wood sat there, questioning, listening, issuing orders, all with a promptness and certainty of judgment that would have been extraordinary in a man quite at his ease; yet all the time, as he could not help showing in mien and features, the raging fever was distressing to the point of agony. Those about him could not but marvel at the man's resolution and endurance. The {122} following day, although still racked with fever, he went by special train to San Luis and investigated the affair in person.'" [Footnote: _Fortnightly Review_.]

The basis of the great work, however, as General Wood has himself repeatedly said in conversation and in print, was to effect all this regeneration without causing the Cubans to look upon the American Army and the American control as they had for years looked upon the Spanish Army and the Spanish control. That his success here in the most difficult phase of the whole prodigious enterprise was absolute has been testified to in innumerable ways and instances.

Only one or two of these can be given here, but they are illuminating in the extreme and they suggest the success of the methods of the man who had been put in charge of this difficult work.

Death amongst the Spanish soldiers had been very heavy from yellow fever and pernicious malaria and the course of the troop-ships which carried them back to Spain was marked by long lists of burials at sea.

These ships carried with them most of the nurses and nursing sisters to {123} care for the sick and dying during the voyage. It was a great drain on the nursing force at Wood's disposal in Santiago. He, therefore, hit upon the idea of offering to pay for the return trips of these nurses if they would come back at once; with the result that most of them gladly accepted and rendered splendid service in Santiago to the sick as a token of their appreciation of the military governor's act. This did much to establish friendly relations between Americans, Spaniards and Cubans who had so short a time before been enemies.

Another vital point was the relations of the invaders with the Church.

It had never been contemplated that a Catholic viceroy should be replaced by a Protestant. This viceroy had so many intimate relations with the Catholic Church in which he represented the Catholic king that it was absolutely necessary for whatever American happened to be governor to play the game regardless of what his own religious scruples might be. As an interesting example of how well this was handled by Wood the story of Bishop Bernaba is a charming instance.

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This bishop was elevated from priesthood while Wood was governor and because of his affection and respect for the American officer he asked him to walk with him daring the ceremonious procession from the priest's little parish church, where he had served, to the old cathedral where he was to officiate thereafter. It was a solemn religious function and has been described, because of the terrific surroundings of the hour, as not unlike the ceremony which took place in Milan after the Great Plague.

The entire population of the city with some forty or fifty thousand from the surrounding hills packed the streets along the route of the procession. None of them had had a blessing from his own Cuban clergy in many years. It was like a mediaeval scene. The old bishop bowed by years, weakened by his recent grief at the suffering of his people and by the excitement of the moment, and General Wood, the American Protestant, walked together under the bishop's canopy. The people in the streets, seeing this, cried: "Thank G.o.d, the General is a Catholic!

We didn't know it!"

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From time to time the old bishop, tired with the exertion of swinging the censer with the holy water, would hand it to Wood and ask him to continue the function by his side until he could secure a slight respite. Occasionally as he leaned forward to bless the thousands who lined the way and who had come to feel his touch and kiss his hand his miter would slip to one side on his head and the unperturbed American general would lean forward and straighten it for him. Each time the old bishop turned to him and murmured, "Thank G.o.d, you are here! I am so old that I could not have made this journey, if you had not been here to help me."

Wood told him that he was not a Catholic, that indeed from Bishop Bernaba's point of view he was a heretic and bound for h.e.l.l.

"No," said the bishop, with a smile, "you are a good Catholic; only you do not know it."

Small wonder that when he left Santiago in the spring of 1899 to visit the United States Wood was presented by the people of the city with a magnificent hand-work scroll which said in Spanish:

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"The people of the City of Santiago de Cuba to General Leonard Wood ... the greatest of all your successes is to have won the confidence and esteem of a people in trouble."

Small wonder that in December, 1899, less than a year after the United States took over the island, he was appointed by President McKinley Governor General of Cuba and made a Major General of United States Volunteers!

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THE ADMINISTRATOR