Joseph Hamblen Sears

“ If the Bolsheviki and theorists outnumber the others we shall have a situation in the United States similar to that in Russia, Austria and Germany. If the stiff-necked reactionaries outnumber the others, we shall smother the flame for a time only to have it burst forth shortly in an infinitely more terrible explosion. If the slow-moving, hard-thinking citizens outnumber the others, we shall maintain the main structure of our house so laboriously built throughout the ages while we change to some extent the nature of the wall paper and the plaster to adapt it to modern conditions. ”

“ The family is the unit of civilization--always has been and always will be. The father and the mother have their collective existence, and their children looking to them for guidance, support and growth, both physical and moral. The moment the family begins to exist it becomes a responsibility for its head, and around it centers a large part of the life and happiness of the human being. ”

“ Thus it becomes possible for a Lenine and a Trotzky to leave their tenement flats in the slums of New York and proceed to the palaces of the Czar to show the hundred and twenty millions of Russians what can be done--and, what is far more to the point, get a hearing. Thus it becomes possible for the International Workers of the World in Russia, France, England and America to get together in conference in Switzerland or elsewhere and discuss how best to destroy not only governments, but private property, law, order, the family and all the beams of the great house at one time. ”

“ 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 for enrollment. None of them knew anything of war. ”

“ Instead of natural competition we have been substituting government regulation. Instead of advancing patriotism, nationalism, Americanism, we have been letting all these give way to internationalism. We have not been preparing ourselves as individuals to assume individual responsibly, but in fact we have been giving up that responsibility to government.
It is through the sense of the people quickened by such men as Wood that we shall come back to sounder methods--not to where we were before. ”

“ He learned, too, something deeper than even these basic essentials of the fighting creed. He developed what has always been a part of himself--the conviction that authority is to be respected, that allegiance to superior officers and government is the first essential of success, that organization is the basis of smoothly running machinery of any kind, and that any weakening of these principles is the sign of decay, of failure, and of disintegration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A young man of twenty-four had been brought up by the sea in what we will call for the sake of politeness conservative New England. He had all the sound and sane basis of character that comes from what in this country was an old and established civilization. He had been educated in his profession at the most academic and conservative institution in the United States; a profession which while not an exact science is nevertheless a science requiring sane methods and the elimination of risks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Later in life this was one of the many points of common interest that drew him and Theodore Roosevelt so closely together. It has no particular significance other than to make it possible for him in many lands at many different limes to do that one great thing which makes men leaders--to show his men the way, to do himself whatever he asked others to do, never to give an order whether to a military, sanitary, medical or administrative force that he could not and did not do himself in so far as one man could do it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That was a great deal for any young man to secure. To-day, after the Great War, there are many such extracts from official reports and all are unquestionably deserved. But they are the result of a nation awakened to patriotism when all went in together. In 1886, when the nation was at peace, when commercial pursuits were calling all young men to make their fortune, young Leonard Wood answered a much less universal call to do his work in a fight that had none of the flare or glory of the front line trench in Flanders. ”

“ The government was robbing the family. The family was robbing the government. That was the fundamental place to begin, if this wing of the house was not to fall.
Naturally the immediate and crying needs had to be corrected at once. But Wood began all on the same day on the beams as well as on the plaster and wall paper--this 20th day of July, 1898. Another man might well have forgotten or never have thought of the fundamentals in the terrible condition within his immediate vision. ”

“ We cannot practice law unless we prepare and take a degree. We cannot enter the medical profession unless we study and take a degree. Wood's great thesis is that we cannot become sound citizens and, therefore, in the group a sound nation, unless we study and prepare to be such.
It sounds so simple that one wonders why it is written. And yet for the last two years under the guise of war necessity this country has been moving in quite another direction. Instead of personal responsibility we have been substituting more and more government responsibility. ”

“ Of such stuff are the men of this world made whom people lean on, whom people naturally look to in emergency, who guide instinctively and unerringly, carrying always the faith of those about them because they deal with sound things, elemental truths and sane methods--because they give mankind what Leonard Wood's greatest friend called "a square deal." ”

“ It is not genius; it is organization. It is not {18} the flare of inventive ability; it is the high vision of one whose code rested always on elemental, sound and enduring principles and who has not swerved from these to admire the plaster and the paper on the wall. It is finally the great quality that makes a man keep his feet on the ground and his heart amongst the bright stars. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is always at such times that reserve force, mental strength, and all the sound basic qualities which make up what we call character play their important parts in the drama of life. No one has, {245} so far as our history tells us, shown greater strength of this nature than Abraham Lincoln, and it is that reserve, that amazing common sense which "with malice toward none, with charity for all" led him on all occasions no matter how extraordinary the provocation to decline to let personalities, jealousies, or any of the baser passions control his actions or influence his decisions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Preparedness was all too unknown in those days, but Wood, who became its nation-wide champion in the days to come, was well schooled even in those days in its laws. He only learned more as time went on. The chaos and tangle of red tape, inefficiency, unpreparedness in all branches of the service blocked every effort that a few efficient and able men were making. Seeing the hopelessness of trying to accomplish anything under such conditions Wood introduced a novel method of organization into the War Department. ”

“ It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. ”

“ Such has been the career of the New Englander from Cape Cod who has worked in his own land, in the tropics, in many spheres, at many problems until at the age of fifty-eight in sound mind and body he stands firmly still in the prime of life ready for many years yet to come of service and work for himself, his family and his fellow countrymen. ”

“ 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 result of long hours of meditation in Boston when, as a young doctor, he decided finally to leave the usual routine of a physician's career and strike out in another and less main-traveled road. ”

“ No man could ride or walk day in and day out across waterless deserts and keep his courage and determination, to say nothing of his good common sense, without being in the best of physical condition. No man could get up in the morning after a terrific night's march, and collect his men and cheer and encourage them unless he was absolutely fit and in better condition than they.
He learned, too, that all matters of outfit, care of person, of equipment, of horses required the most constant attention day by day, hour by hour. ”

“ In the practice of his profession he was able to do a lasting service to his commanding officer. General Miles suffered a grave accident to his leg when a horse fell upon it. It was the opinion of the surgeon who attended him that amputation would be necessary. But the General was of no mind to beat a one-legged retreat in the midst of a highly interesting and successful career. Captain Wood had inspired confidence in him as an Indian fighter--a confidence so strong that he thought it might not be misplaced if it became confidence in him as a doctor--and so Wood was summoned. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But for a New Englander educated at Harvard to the practice of medicine to pick up his deeply driven stakes and actually go into this realm of romance was unusual in the extreme; and to be so well trained and in such good condition, with such high courage as to make good at once amongst those men who looked down on an Eastern tender-foot was sufficiently rare to promise much for the future. ”