The Career of Leonard Wood Part 7

Finally a const.i.tutional convention was planned and held, at which a const.i.tution of the republican form based upon that of the United States was framed and adopted; an electoral law for elections in the Cuban republic was also adopted; and the general administrative law of the land was rewritten and adapted so that the government of the Island could be turned over to its inhabitants in workable form even though that form was new to them and they new to self-government in any form.

Look for a moment at the result of this work. In December, 1899, Leonard Wood took command of the Island of Cuba. In May, 1902, he turned over that Island to its own inhabitants. In 1899 except for the military work done by the American Army the Island contained Spaniards who had for years been its autocratic rulers and who had recently been defeated in a war; and Cubans who {149} had for years been governed by a tyrant race. In 1902 these two century-old hostile groups, neither of whom had ever had any real experience in modern representative government, received their country at the hands of the Americans with new laws, with a republican form of government, with their own kind for rulers elected by their own people, and began an existence that has now been running long enough to prove that the work was so well performed for them as to make the impossible possible--the rotten kingdom, a clean republic; the decayed colony, an independent, proud democracy.

It is a piece of work unparalleled in the annals of history. And the closing episodes which occurred in Havana are a witness to the affection and pride in which the people held the man who had accomplished it, the nation which had ordered it and their Island which was the scene of its happening.

One typical episode occurred on the night of President Palma's inauguration ball given to the new President and the new Cuban Congress by General Wood. Wood took a number of the {150} princ.i.p.al representatives of the new Cuban Congress to the Spanish Club--the hotbed of the Spanish _regime_--where there was a celebration in progress in honor of King Alfonso's birthday. The two nationalities fraternized at once under the influence of the American Governor-General, and all of them, Spaniards and Cubans, drank the health of the King of Spain. The President and the princ.i.p.al members of the Club then joined the party and went to the ball together, where in turn all of them, Spaniards and Cubans alike, drank the health of the new republic. When Wood's family left for Spain the Spanish colony in Havana made a request that they should sail on the Spanish Royal Mail Steamer in order that they might show their appreciation of his work. And this ship when she sailed was the first Spanish boat to salute the brand new Cuban flag which had just been raised at the entrance to the harbor where for 400 years before that day the flag of Spain had waved.

Another witness to the singular skill with which the Governor-General handled the diplomatic relations of the republic, and which is probably {151} unequaled anywhere in history, follows. This witness has to do with his work in laying the foundations of peace between the government of the Island and the Catholic Church. It is only possible here to quote from a few of the doc.u.ments which Wood received not only as acknowledgment of his wise and sane policy, but as voluntary signs of personal affection and respect which the writers held for him when his difficult task was done. Monsignor Donatus, Bishop of Havana, wrote among other letters three which deserve quoting here. They were all voluntary expressions on his part. The first, dated at Havana on August 10, 1900, says in part:

"To His Excellency, Major-General Leonard Wood, U.S.A., Military Governor of Cuba. Honored Sir:

"I saw published in the official Gazetta yesterday the decree whereby you give civil effects and validity to religious marriages. This act of your Excellency corresponds perfectly with the elevated ideals of justice, fairness and true liberty to which aspired the inst.i.tutions and government of {152} the United States, which you so worthily represent in this Island.

"I gladly take this opportunity of declaring that in all my dealings with your Excellency I have found you ever disposed to listen to all reasonable pet.i.tions and to guard the sacred rights of justice which is the firmest foundation of every honored and n.o.ble nation.

"I am moved, therefore, to speak the thanks not only of the Catholics but likewise of all others who truly love the moral, religious and political well-being of the people, and to express to your Excellency the sincere feelings and satisfaction and grat.i.tude for this decree, which is worthy of a wise leader and an able statesman. This too gives me confidence that all your decrees and orders will continue to be dictated by the same high-minded and liberal spirit of justice that while it respects the religious sentiment, also guarantees and defends the rights and liberties of all honest inst.i.tutions. Very respectfully yours, X. Donatus, Bishop of Havana."

The second from the same place, dated December 11, 1900, says:

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"All lovers of liberty of conscience, all guardians of the sanct.i.ty of the home and all who understand and admire good citizenship must recognize in this as in your other order on the same subject, the wisdom of a far-seeing statesman and the courage of a fearless executive.

"Thanking you therefore in my own name and in the name of the Church I represent, I remain with every sentiment of respect and esteem, Very sincerely yours, X. Donatus, Bishop of Havana."

And finally as the Bishop was leaving Havana in November, 1901, to become the Bishop of Ephesus and proceed to Rome, he wrote:

"Called by the confidence of the Holy Father to a larger and more difficult field of action, I feel the duty before leaving Cuba to express to your Excellency my sentiment of friendship and grat.i.tude, not only for the kindness shown to me, but for the fair treatment of the questions with the Government of the Island, especially the Marriage and Church Property questions. The equity and justice which inspired your decisions will devolve before all fair-minded people to the honor, not {154} only of you personally, but also to the Government you so worthily represent. I am gratified to tell you that I have already expressed the same sentiment to the Holy Father in writing and I will tell him orally on my visit to Rome. Yours very respectfully, X. Donatus, Bishop of Havana."

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 G.o.d 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 acc.u.mulate 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 t.i.tle 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 circ.u.mstances.

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 pa.s.sing 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 unp.r.o.nounceable 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 a.s.sent 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 acc.u.mulate in the way of books, pamphlets, records and so on const.i.tutes 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?"