The Career of Leonard Wood Part 9

Here then was a difficult problem: to establish civil government among these wandering hill tribes, Filipino settlements, and piratical Mohammedan groups, each fearing and hating the other. General Wood's first task as he conceived it was to stop slave-trading and establish relations of tolerance, if not friends.h.i.+p, between the Filipinos and the Moros on the one hand and between the Moros and the hill tribes on the other; to stop the Christian Filipinos from imposing {188} on the hill tribes; and to begin some method for subst.i.tuting respect for law and order, for government and authority in the place of terror and hatred. The ending of the slave trade resulted in many heavy, long-drawn-out fights with the princ.i.p.al Moro bands. The Sultan of Sulu had not lived up to the Bates Treaty and he had to be deposed, therefore, as a sovereign in Sulu.

The next step was to organize some form of government that would fit the situation. To start this Wood divided the entire Moro area, including the islands, into districts and appointed American officers of experience and ability as governors of the districts.

He then visited Borneo and studied carefully the laws and regulations under which that chartered colony governed the Malays within its borders. The policy laid down by him for the district governors was to stop slave-trading and the taking of life and property at once; to establish next friendly relations between the people living on the coast and the timid tribes up in the hills; to build up commerce on a fair basis; to open up trails and lines of communication between {189} villages; to a.s.sure to every one, no matter what his religion, a fair deal. He also laid great stress on the necessity of bringing the headmen of the different tribes into contact with the district governors and of doing all that could be done to build up and increase commerce.

At the same time the new and energetic Governor-General inst.i.tuted a strong policy to stop forever the inhuman practices and customs highly repugnant to what Americans considered humane conduct. Every effort was made to insure better treatment of women, who up to that time had been nothing more nor less than chattels. On the seacoast trading stations were built and put in charge of men who spoke the dialect of the wild people. At these stations there was always a provincial agent who had authority to see that the hill people got fair prices for their products and just treatment from the Malays. Little by little as a result of this wise and sane policy they were all induced to come to the stations and make their head-quarters there during the trading period. In former times they had been accustomed to bring down their heavy loads of jungle products on their {190} shoulders and rather than stay in the neighborhood of the pirates over night they would sell their goods for anything they could get and hurry up into the hills again before dark. Moro, Filipino and Chinese traders had for centuries systematically robbed them. Money was of little use to them and therefore all trading was by barter. It was a long campaign of education which Wood inst.i.tuted to build up confidence amongst these timid people, and he sent young American officers among them, traveling often-times hundreds of miles on foot and practically without any protection to help them and give them confidence.

Little by little confidence was built up; great peace meetings were arranged among the different tribes; old grudges were wiped out; scores were balanced and old feuds settled. It took time and brains and painstaking patience, but it was done and done well.

At the same time, taking a leaf from his own Cuban notebook, Wood started schools in the Filipino villages and took steps to do the same among the Moros. It was very difficult to {191} find teachers who would be received by these Moslems. It was at first almost impossible to get them to send their children to school at all. Nothing but time and sound, honest methods in dealing with these people made all or any of this possible.

Patrol boats were put on duty in the waters about the islands.

Simultaneous with this building up went the organization of the customs service, since the province had to be entirely self-supporting. Native people from among the Moros and Filipinos were organized into what was called the constabulary. Every effort was made to turn the attention of the people from irregular and piratical activities to the activities of commerce. School laws were put in force, written in terms to meet the situation. Increased cultivation of new land, cultivation of cocoanuts, cocoa, and various local products, including hemp, was encouraged by exempting it from taxation provided certain amounts of useful crops were planted thereon.

Communications by land and water were built up as fast as possible.

After a time taxation was {192} imposed very gradually in the form of a cedula, or poll tax. The money so collected was spent so far as possible in the district where it was collected. The headmen of the tribes and sub-tribes were made officials of the province and given a baldric bearing a bra.s.s s.h.i.+eld with the seal of the province. In time they were given certain police authority for the maintenance of order.

If the local headman could not handle the situation, the local constabulary was called in. If they in turn were not sufficient, then the troops were sent into the area.

A free man's life was worth fifty-two dollars and a half in gold; a male slave one-half this amount; a free woman was worth as much as a male slave; a female slave half as much as a male slave, and a modern rifle about two hundred dollars in gold.

As the simple processes of law came to be better understood natives were encouraged to appeal from the tribal to the district court, consisting of the district governor and the local priests or headmen, who advised the former upon tribal {193} customs and scales of punishment, in order that no injustice should be done to any one.

Gradually appeals were taken from the district courts to the regular insular courts, which were represented by itinerant judges of the first instance. The latter belonged to the regular Philippine judiciary and were at this time all Americans. Women were given equal status before the law and the rights of property were safeguarded.

After the first hard fighting the need for the use of troops gradually diminished and more and more of the policing work was done by the native constabulary. The wildest regions became practically safe.

After the districts were in working order munic.i.p.alities and towns.h.i.+ps were established and the framework of civic organization begun. The Mohammedan religion was left undisturbed. Religious freedom was guaranteed to both Mohammedans and Christians. In addition to the Catholic missionaries who had been working there for hundreds of years, missionaries of other denominations commenced to take active interest in the situation. The revenue was sufficient to maintain {194} the province in good shape and there was a considerable amount of money in reserve.

Thus in three years, with the knowledge he had acquired in Cuba supplemented by his visits and study amongst the colonies of other nations where similar problems existed, with his extraordinary energy and capacity for working through innumerable subordinates, Leonard Wood again built up a community out of nothing but land and human beings. But in the Philippine instance he built up a community largely governing itself upon a system of laws still in force--though three governors have succeeded him--from a hopeless ma.s.s of Christian Filipinos, Chinese traders, Malay pirates, Mohammedans, cannibals and feudal tribes.

It was a remarkable instance of state building, which following upon the Cuban episodes, stands out as the greatest achievement any man has accomplished in Colonial history.

It is impossible to state the relative importance of this work without appearing to overdo it. Yet if we could but collect the tributes that have been paid to Wood upon its accomplishment they {195} would make a volume, Richard Olney wrote: "... to congratulate you personally on the most successful and deservedly successful career, whether as soldier or public man of any sort, that the Spanish War and its consequences have brought to the front." John Hay, then Secretary of State, wrote Wood a note "with sincere congratulations on the approaching fruition of all your splendid work for the regeneration of Cuba," and Senator Platt, of Connecticut, wrote of his "admiration for your administration under difficulties greater I think than have ever had to be encountered by any one man in reconstruction work." So the record of two statesmenlike and administrative works stands to this day as a witness of Wood's qualities.

In 1905 after a visit to the United States he returned to the islands and became commander-in-chief of the American forces in the Philippines, General Bliss taking his place as Governor of the Moros, who were now established under a basic form of government and procedure which Wood had inaugurated.

By 1908 this work was practically completed {196} and the procedure laid out for the future rule of that part of the Philippines. At that time General Wood was transferred to Governor's Island in New York Harbor as Commander of the Department of the East, strangely enough the first command he had held within the United States since the Geronimo days in the Southwest.

There followed in the next six years a diplomatic mission as special Amba.s.sador to the Argentine Republic upon the occasion of the centenary of Argentina, where he met and talked with General von der Groltz, the German officer, who had so much to do with the Great War later. From this meeting Wood absorbed more of the necessity for universal military training and more of the aversion to a standing army such as existed in Germany. After this mission he became the head of the American military forces under the President of the United States and for four years held the position of Chief of Staff.

Thus beginning his army life in 1886 as an army surgeon he rose in twenty-two years to the highest position in the regular army that any one can hold. That, in a sense, closes a certain {197} period in General Wood's career. For when in 1914 he was again made Commander of the Department of the East he had already started upon his campaign of national preparation which had been growing and growing in his mind as he lived and served his own nation and observed and studied other nations. The knowledge he had acquired in the four quarters of the earth showed to him conclusively that a nation must be ready to resist attack in order to live in peace, and yet that that nation must not spend all its wealth and time and brains in building up a military machine. In a strange way the att.i.tude of this New England "Mayflower"

descendant resembled the att.i.tude of his own native Cape Cod, which stands at the outposts of New England with its clenched fist ready and prepared, yet which lives on quietly in the lives of its inhabitants who proceed in peace with their commercial occupations and their family existence.

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THE PATRIOT

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VIII

THE PATRIOT

"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 citizens.h.i.+p 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 to be prepared for it."

Such sentiments quoted from General Wood's many speeches and writings might be continued until they alone made a volume--a book of the Creed of the Patriot. For in his crusade up and down our land for the last six years he has developed an unsuspected ability for epigrammatic phraseology, for stating in concise, homely {202} language the principle that no one in any successful operation has failed to get ready. This was unsuspected in him, because up to 1913 he had had little to say outside of his official reports. His motto of doing the thing without talking about it had been followed to the letter by himself.

When he finally arrived at a position which was important and powerful enough to give him an opportunity for putting his beliefs into effect, when he furthermore arrived at a point where there was not the immediate necessity for feeding a starving people, or fighting a hostile military force, or reorganizing a tumbled-down state, or doing any of the things demanding immediate action with which he had been employed during most of his life--then with characteristic energy he did begin. Time could not be bought by him any more than it could be by others and his work of preparedness had to await a period of peace when the time was at hand. This period having arrived in 1912 and 1918 he found that in order to produce any impression, to get action upon this plan, he must not only have a high and powerful position but he must awaken the public {203} to its importance before he could expect legislative or departmental action. Hence the volume of the Creed of the Patriot.

With his accustomed energy therefore he started upon a campaign of writing, speaking and promoting in all ways open to him to bring this new plan before the people of this country and in doing so he developed the hitherto unsuspected qualities of a speaker of the highest, because the simplest and most homely order.

To him there was nothing new in the plan of preparedness for the nation. He might have said to himself in 1913: "I have found that in order to be a doctor a young man must study so many years; in order to fight Apache Indians successfully a man must train for a physical condition that permits him to walk and ride and live harder than his already trained opponents, that he must train soldiers for that particular job, must train and care for horses to cover that particular country. I have found by sad experience that to have a regiment of Rough Riders in proper condition to fight Spaniards in Cuba the men must be taught by long training to understand military principles, {204} subordination to military rule of procedure, the use of guns and animals and the laws and tactics of military action in the field; that these men must be taught to take care of themselves in the open, that ammunition and equipment must be at hand and in use. I have found that in order to produce order in a community where there is no order, health in a land where there is only sickness, happiness amongst a people where there is only misery and fear and worry--in order to do all this laws must be made and respected, people must learn that they owe something to their state and that they are responsible for honest care, administration and thoughtfulness of those who look to them as they look to their state. 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PATRIOT]

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He might have said all this to himself--doubtless has done so many, many times with much more to the same effect--but the outcome is a witness of the fact that he has from a long and active life as fighter, soldier, organizer, administrator, diplomat and statesman in the West, the South, in Europe, in Asia, in Cuba, in the Philippines, in South America, in Was.h.i.+ngton--in most parts of the earth--learned again and again that nothing can be really done on the spur of the moment, that everybody must prepare from school days to death. And in 1913 he had his first real opportunity to preach this nationally to all the people of his own native land.

That within a year of that time prepared Germany should have upset the world and found the British Empire, the French Republic and the Italian Kingdom unprepared--to say nothing of the United States--may have been one of the accidents--strokes of fortune--that some people say have made General Wood. But it would seem that the only thing this Great War did in this {206} connection was to prove by a terrific example that Wood and those with him were right and that those who were against him were wrong.

If the war had not come, it would have taken longer to awaken this country to the facts and it would have delayed perhaps the growth of General Wood's name as that of a national and international character of highest importance. But it would not have changed the truth of his Creed--or rather the creed of which he has become the great protagonist. 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. It is the variety of things done which puts him in his present position, just as it is the variety of high qualities that has made the great men of all times great. King David was not only the greatest {207} general of his time.

He was one of the greatest administrators of all time and perhaps the greatest poet that ever lived. Was.h.i.+ngton was not only a fighter of the highest order. He was one of the great generals of history; and a statesman and ruler of a higher order still.

It might very aptly be said, therefore, that General Wood's campaign for national preparedness was only the accomplishment of a task for which he had all his life been preparing himself.

Upon his return trip from the Philippines in 1908 he had come by the way of Europe studying always military systems. There was a short stop in Ceylon, in Singapore, in Egypt, in Malta and Gibraltar and a summer spent in Switzerland, ostensibly for health recuperation after the tropical life in Moroland and Manila, At the same time this gave opportunity for a closer study of the Swiss system which with an admixture of the Australian system furnished the basis for the training camps afterwards inaugurated by him here.