GEN. WOOD'S NOTABLE CAREER DESCRIBED BY PROF. WARREN

In a recent interview with a CRIMSON reporter, Professor Joseph Warren '97, President of the Wood Club of Harvard, expressed himself as strongly in favor of General Leonard Wood's nomination for the presidency and gave a short synopsis of Leonard Wood's career.

"I am for General Wood as a candidate for President because his public career of thirty-five years has shown him to be a man of courage, initiative, highmindedness, judgment, executive ability and Americanism--to a degree befitting the holder of that office. And I take this opportunity to present to the younger men some facts in General Wood's life with which they may be unacquainted.

"General Wood was born in New Hampshire in 1860. When he was three months old his family moved to Massachusetts, where his boyhood was spent, principally on Cape Cod. As a youth he was thrown on his own resources, attended the Harvard Medical School, graduated therefrom in 1884, and afterwards served in the Boston City Hospital as house officer. One of his chiefs there has told me that General Wood was one of the most efficient surgical internes with whom he ever came in contact. Becoming restless at the inactivity in Boston of the position of a young doctor struggling to get practice he soon decided to enter the army as surgeon, and in 1885 was sent to the Mexican border. There he served under General Miles and more immediately under Captain Lawton in the pursuit of Geronimo and his Apache band. Owing to the shortage of line officers, but more particularly to his desire for active service, he acted temporarily as a line officer, and for the highest courage in that disheartening and dangerous pursuit was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Later he was assigned to Washington as physician to Presidents Cleveland and McKinley.

Colonel of Rough Riders

"Here began that part of his career that made him the hero of the younger Harvard men of twenty odd years ago. Theodore Roosevelt at the outbreak of the Spanish war chose Captain Wood as Colonel of the Rough Riders, taking himself the rank of Lieutenant Colonel; and it was due to the commander's energy and resolution that the needs of the regiment in those days of unpreparedness were quickly satisfied, and, when other organizations were fuming at Key West, the men were landed in Cuba to enter upon their short but valuable service.

"At the end of the war a few months later Leonard Wood was made commander of the recently besieged city of Santiago and quickly established cleanliness, health and order in that hotbed of filth and disease. This led to his appointment soon after as Governor-General of the new Republic of Cuba. There his task was to clean up after the disgrace of the Spanish rule, and to settle the Cuban Government upon a secure and independent footing; in short to preserve for all time the fruits of the victory of 1898. With the eyes of the whole world watching the experiment of the United States, he made a brilliant success. Transportation, schools, justice, government, and above all yellow fever had to be dealt with in a manner demanding of the governor the highest qualities of judgment character and action. The foresight and courage with which he supported the experiments of the medical men for the extirpation of yellow fever, of far reaching importance in the history of Cuba and the Canal Zone, was a marked feature of his administration. In 1899 Harvard conferred on him at 38 the degree of LL.D. Lord Cramer, when asked to suggest someone to succeed him as viceroy of Egypt said that the only man who could be his successor was not an Englishman but an American--Leonard Wood.

Restored Order to Moros.

"In 1902 he went to Germany as an American military observer of the German maneuvers. On his return he applied for the difficult and dangerous task of bringing order to the Moros in the Philippines, and on his way to this post visited Egypt, India and Java to observe the methods of dealing with native populations presenting a mixture of races and beliefs, in many ways a more delicate and difficult undertaking than the problem in Cuba. He was here conspicuously successful. From 'a slave-holding, polygamous, head-hunting land' he developed a community largely self governing. In 1905 he was commander in chief of the American forces in the Philippines. He returned to the United States. in 1908 and served as commander of the Department of the East at Governors Island, as special ambassador to the Argentine, and for four years as Chief of Staff of the United States Army.

"Of his work during the war it is unnecessary here to speak; of his struggle for preparedness; of his visit to France and of his wound there; and of his command at Camp Funston--for they are known to all. His work last autumn at Gary shows that his great abilities are as strong as ever.

"Those of us in middle life may well feel proud to have an opportunity to vote for the young hero of their college days, and to pass on to the students of today the message that his brilliant early success in procuring and gathering the fruits of victory in 1898 is prophetic of what that developed older man may now accomplish."