would start for destination unknown at once, leaving four troops and
all the horses behind them. On the evening of June 7th notification
came that they would leave from Port Tampa, nine miles away, the
following morning, and that if the troops were not aboard the
transport at that time they could not sail. No arrangements were made
by the port authorities for the embarkation. No information could be
obtained regarding transportation by rail to the port. There was no
information regarding the transport that the troops were to use. In an
official report made to the Secretary of War Colonel Roosevelt had the
following remarks to make about the conditions that confronted them in
Tampa:
". . . No information was given in advance {86} what transports we
should take, or how we should proceed to get aboard, nor did any one
exercise any supervision over the embarkation. Each regimental
commander, so far as I know, was left to find out as best he could,
after he was down at the dock, what transport had not been taken, and
then to get his regiment aboard it, if he was able, before some other
regiment got it. Our regiment was told to go to a certain switch and
take a train for Port Tampa at twelve o'clock, midnight. The train
never came. After three hours of waiting, we were sent to another
switch, and finally at six o'clock in the morning got possession of
some coal cars and came down in them. When we reached the quay where
the embarkation was proceeding, everything was in utter confusion. The
quay was piled with stores and swarming with thousands of men of
different regiments, besides onlookers, etc. The Commanding General,
when we at last found him, told Colonel Wood and myself that he did
not know what ship we were to embark on, and that we must find Colonel
Humphrey, the Quarter-master General. Colonel Humphrey was not in his
office, and nobody knew where he was. The {87} commanders of the
different regiments were busy trying to find him, while their troops
waited in the trains, so as to discover the ships to which they were
allotted--some of these ships being at the dock and some in
mid-stream. After a couple of hours' search, Colonel Wood found
Colonel Humphrey and was allotted a ship. Immediately afterward I
found that it had already been allotted to two other regiments. It was
then coming to the dock. Colonel Wood boarded it in midstream to keep
possession, while I double-quicked the men down from the cars and got
there just ahead of the other two regiments. One of these regiments, I
was afterward informed, spent the next thirty-six hours in cars in
consequence."
The conditions at Tampa provided material for a spirited exchange of
letters and telegrams between General Miles, who had taken command,
and Secretary of War Alger.
On June 4th, General Miles filed by telegraph the following report to
the Secretary of War:
"Several of the volunteer regiments came here without uniforms;
several came without arms, and some without blankets, tents, or camp
equipage. {88} The 32d Michigan, which is among the best, came without
arms. General Guy V. Henry reports that five regiments under his
command are not fit to go into the field. There are over three hundred
cars loaded with war material along the roads about Tampa. Stores are
sent to the Quartermaster at Tampa, but the invoices and bills of
lading have not been received, so that the officers are obliged to
break open seals and hunt from car to car to ascertain whether they
contain clothing, grain, balloon material, horse equipments,
ammunition, siege guns, commissary stores, etc. Every effort is being
made to bring order out of confusion. I request that rigid orders be
given requiring the shipping officers to forward in advance complete
invoices and bills of lading, with descriptive marks of every package,
and the number and description of car in which shipped. To illustrate
the embarrassment caused by present conditions, fifteen cars loaded
with uniforms were sidetracked twenty-five miles from Tampa, and
remained there for weeks while the troops were suffering for clothing.
Five thousand rifles, which were discovered yesterday, were needed by
{89} several regiments. Also the different parts of the siege train
and ammunition for same, which will be required immediately on
landing, are scattered through hundreds of cars on the sidetracks of
the railroads. Notwithstanding these difficulties, this expedition
will soon be ready to sail."
In answer to this dispatch was sent the following reply from Secretary
Alger:
"Twenty thousand men ought to unload any number of cars and assort
contents. There is much criticism about delay of expedition. Better
leave a fast ship to bring balance of material needed, than delay
longer."
This slight difference of opinion which a shrewd observer can discover
between the lines was characteristic of the whole preparation of the
United States army that undertook to carry on the war with Spain. As
one remembers those days, or reads of them in detail, it seems as if
every one did something wrong regularly, as if no one of ability was
anywhere about. As a matter of fact, however, the organizing and
shipping of a suddenly acquired expeditionary volunteer force has
never been accomplished in any other way. The truth {90} of the matter
is that it can never be run properly at the start for the simple
reason that there is no organization fitted to carry out the details.
The officials in Washington who had to do with the army--good men in
many cases, poor men in some cases--if they had been in office long
had been handling a few hundred men here and there in the forts, on
the plains, or at the regular military posts. They could no more be
molded into a homogeneous whole than could the cowboys, stockbrokers,
college athletes, and southern planters maneuver until they had been
drilled.
To Colonel Wood, busy most of the hours of the day and night trying to
get order out of chaos in his small part of the great rush, the whole
episode was a graphic demonstration of the need of getting ready. Many
years later a much-advertised politician of our land said that an army
was not necessary since immediately upon the need for defense of our
country a million farmers would leave their plows and leap to arms. To
an officer trying to find a transport train in the middle of the night
with a thousand hungry, tired, half-trained men under him such logic
aught well have {91} caused a smile, if nothing worse. Leave his plow
at such a call the American Citizen will--and by the millions, if need
be. He has done just that in the last two years. He will leap to
arms--to continue the rhetoric--but what can he do if he finds no
arms, or if they do not exist and cannot be made for nine months?
But the thing was not new to Wood even in those days. As he talks of
that period now he says that it was not so bad. There was food, rough,
but still food, and enough. There were transports. It only needed that
they be found. If you could not get uniforms of blue, take uniforms of
tan. If you could not find sabers, go somewhere, in or out of the
country, and buy them or requisition them and put in the charge later.
Yet, even so, no man in such a position, going through what he went
through, worrying hour by hour, could fail to see the object lesson
and take the first opportunity when peace was declared to begin to
preach the necessity for getting ready for the next occasion. And it
was largely due to Leonard Wood, as the world well knows, that what
{92} little preparation was made in 1915 and 1916 in advance of the
United States declaring war was made at all. It was the lessons
acquired in the Spanish War and in the study of other wars that made
of him the great prophet of preparedness.
For several days the troops remained aboard the transport in Tampa
harbor awaiting orders. The heat and discomfort told upon the men, but
on the evening of June 13th orders came to start and the next morning
found them at sea. On the morning of the 20th the transport came off
the Cuban coast; but it was not until the 22d that the welcome order
for landing came. The troops landed at the squalid little village of
Daiquiri in small boats, while the smaller war vessels shelled the
town.
In the afternoon of the next day, the Rough Riders received orders to
advance; and Wood, leading his regiment, pushed on so as to be sure of
an engagement with the enemy the next morning. It was due to his
energy that the Rough Riders did not miss the first fight. Under
General Young's orders the Rough Riders took up a {93} position at the
extreme left of the front. The next day the action of "Las Guasimas"
began.
"Shoot--don't swear" growled Wood as the fighting began. He strolled
about encouraging his men and urging them to action. Under his quiet,
cool direction they advanced slowly, forcing the enemy back, and
finally driving him to his second line of defense. Soon the Rough
Riders' right joined the left of the main body and in a concerted
attack the Spaniards were routed, leaving much of their equipment in
their hasty retreat.
At this juncture it was reported to Roosevelt, whose detachment was
separate from that of Wood, that Wood had been killed. Roosevelt
immediately began taking over the command of the entire regiment,
since it naturally devolved upon him. As he was consolidating his
troops he came upon Wood himself very much alive.
Major-General Joseph Wheeler made the following report of the Rough
Riders:
"Colonel Wood's Regiment was on the extreme left of the line, and too
far-distant for me to be a personal witness of the individual conduct
of his officers and men; but the magnificent and brave {94} work done
by the regiment, under the lead of Colonel Wood, testifies to his
courage and skill. The energy and determination of this officer had
been marked from the moment he reported to me at Tampa, Fla., and I
have abundant evidence of his brave and good conduct on the field, and
I recommend him for consideration of the Government."
On the 25th, General Young was stricken by the fever and Wood took
charge of the brigade on the 30th, leaving Roosevelt in command of the
Rough Riders. The afternoon of the 30th brought orders to march on
Santiago, and the morning of July 1st found them in position three
miles from the city, with Leonard Wood commanding the second
dismounted cavalry brigade. During the next two days, the enemy fought
fiercely to regain his lost positions, but the cool persistence of the
American troops forced him constantly backward.
In endorsing Wood's report of this action, General Wheeler said, "He
showed energy, courage, and good judgment. I heretofore recommended
him for promotion to a Brigadier-General. He {95} deserves the highest
commendation. He was under the observation and direction of myself and
of my staff during the battle."
After a short siege the Spanish command capitulated on the afternoon
of July 17th and the American forces entered Santiago.
Wood's promotion to Brigadier-General of the United States Volunteers
came at once, and Roosevelt was made Colonel and placed in command of
the 2d Cavalry Brigade.
The condition of our forces at this time, struggling against the
unaccustomed and virulent dangers of the tropics, was pitiable. The
"Round Robin" incident in which the commanding officers of the various
divisions in the command reported to Major-General W. R. Shafter, that
"the Army must be moved at once, or it will perish," has become a part
of the record of the history of those times. Whether the sickness and
disease they suffered could have been prevented became a matter of
great controversy.
This "Round Robin" was a document signed by practically all general
officers present, in order to bring to the attention of the War
Department {96} the conditions existing in the army that had captured
Santiago showing that it was suffering severely from malaria and
yellow fever; that these men must be replaced; and that if they were
not replaced thousands of lives would be lost. It was sent because
instructions from Washington clearly indicated that the War Department
did not understand the conditions, and it was feared that delay would
cause enormous loss of life. The men had been in mud and water--the
yellow fever country--for weeks and were thoroughly infected with
malaria. Although he had signed the "Round Robin"' with the other
officers General Wood later on gave the following testimony before the
War Investigation Committee:
"We had never served in that climate, so peculiarly deadly from the
effects of malaria, and in this respect my opinions have changed very
much since the close of the war. If I had been called before you in
the first week of August, I might have been disposed to have answered
a little differently in some respects. I have been there ever since,
and have seen regiments come to Cuba in perfect health and go into
tents with floors and {97} with flies camped up on high hills, given
boiled water, and have seen them have practically the identical
troubles we had during the campaign. The losses may not have been as
heavy, as we are organized to take them into hospitals protected from
the sun which seemed to be a depressing cause. All the immune
regiments serving in my department since the war have been at one time
or another unfit for service. I have had all the officers of my staff
repeatedly too sick for duty. I don't think that any amount of
precaution or preparation, in addition to what we had, would have made
any practical difference in the sickness of the troops of the army of
invasion. This is a candid opinion, and an absolutely frank one. If I
had answered this question in August, without the experience I have
had since August, I might have been disposed to attribute more to the
lack of tentage than I do now; but I think the food, while lacking
necessarily in variety, was ample."
Only a few years later the explanation of yellow fever transmission
became clear to all the world. This discovery and the definite methods
of {98} protection against its spread and the spread of malaria were
largely the result of Wood's administrative ability and his knowledge
of medicine. For it was as the result of studies and experiments
conducted under his direct supervision that it became known that
yellow fever was the result of the bite of the mosquito and not of bad
food or low, marshy country or bad air or any of the other factors
which had so long been supposed to be its cause. The taking of
Santiago practically ended the Spanish War. But for the military
commander of the City of Santiago it began a new and epoch-making
work.
{99}
THE ORGANIZER
{100}
{101}
V
THE ORGANIZER
To understand the work accomplished by Wood in Santiago, it is
necessary to renew our picture of the situation existing in Cuba at
the time and to realize as this is done that the problem was an
absolutely new one for the young officer of thirty-seven to whom it
was presented.
Nobody can really conceive of the unbelievable condition of affairs
unless he actually saw it or has at some time in his life witnessed a
corresponding situation. Those who return from the battlefields on the
Western Front of the Great War describe the scenes and show us
pictures and we think we realize the horrors of destruction, yet one
after another of us as we go there comes back with the same statement:
"I had heard all about it, but I hadn't the least conception of what
it really was until I saw it with my own eyes."
In like manner we who are accustomed to reasonably clean and
well-policed cities can call up no {102} real picture of what the
Cuban cities were in those days, unless we saw them, or something like
them.
Yet in spite of this it is necessary to try to give some idea of the
fact, in order to give some idea of the work of reorganization
required.
For four hundred years Cuba had been under the Spanish rule--the rule
of viceroys and their agents who came of a race that has for centuries
been unable to hold its own among the nations of the earth. Ideas of
health, drainage, sanitation, orderly government, systematic
commercial life--all were of an order belonging to but few spots in
the world to-day. Here and there in the East--perhaps in what has been
called the "cesspool of the world," Guayaquil, Ecuador--and in other
isolated spots there are still such places, but they are fortunately
beginning to disappear as permanent forms of human life.
In Santiago there were about 50,000 inhabitants. These people had been
taxed and abused by officials who collected and kept for themselves
the funds of the Province. Fear of showing wealth, since it was
certain to be confiscated, led all classes of families to hide what
little they had. {103} Money for the city and its public works there
was none, since all was taken for the authorities in Spain or for
their representatives in Cuba. Spanish people in any kind of position
treated the natives as if they were slaves--as indeed they were. No
family was sure of its own legitimate property, its own occupation and
its own basic rights. The city government was so administered as to
deprive all the citizens of any respect for it or any belief in its
statements, decrees or laws. Not only was this condition of affairs in
existence at the time of the war but it had existed during the entire
lifetime of any one living and during the entire lifetime of his
father, grandfather and ancestors for ten generations.
As a result no Cuban had any conception of what honest government,
honest administration, honest taxation, honest dealings were. He not
only had no conception of such things but he believed that what his
family for generations and he during his life had known was the actual
situation everywhere throughout the world. He knew of nothing else.
The city had no drainage system except the {104} open gutter of the
streets--never had had. The water system consisted of an elemental
sort of dam six miles up in the hills outside the city, old, out of
repair, constantly breaking down, and a single 11-inch pipe which had
a capacity of 200,000 gallons a day for the city--something like four
gallons to a person. This was not sufficient for more than one-quarter
of each day. In other words the city at the best was receiving for
years only one-quarter of the water it absolutely needed for
cleanliness.
Plagues and epidemics, smallpox, yellow fever, bubonic plague, typhus
and tetanus followed one another in regular succession. The streets
for years had contained dead animals and many times in epidemics dead
human beings--sights to which the citizens had been so accustomed
throughout their lives that they paid no attention to them. The
authorities being accustomed to keeping the public moneys for their
own use spent little or nothing upon public works, cleaning the
streets or making improvements. They did not build; they did not
replace; they only patched and repaired when it was absolutely
necessary. It was {105} a situation difficult to conceive, impossible
to realize. Yet one must constantly bear in mind that there not only
appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary in this, but in reality
there was nothing out of the ordinary. It was the accustomed, usual
thing and had been so for centuries.
The sense of personal responsibility to the community was not dormant;
it did not exist. The sense of duty of those who governed to those
whom they governed was not repressed by modern corruption only; it had
ceased to exist altogether. No city official was expected to do
anything but get what he could out of those under him. No citizen knew
anything but the necessity--to him the right--of concealing anything
he had, of deceiving everybody whom he could deceive and of evading
any law that might be promulgated.
The integrity of the family and its right to live as it chose within
restrictions required by gregarious existence had disappeared--never
had existed at all so far as those living knew. The responsibility of
the individual to his government was unconceivable and inconceivable.
Had all this not been so there would have been {106} no war on our
part with Spain, for the whole origin of the trouble which eventually
led to war grew out of the final despair of men and women in Cuba who
gradually came to realize in a dim way that something was wrong and
unfair. Out of this grew internal dissension which constantly spilled
over to interfere with international relations.
It was the inevitable breaking down of a civilization because of the
years during which civilization's laws had been disregarded, and
because all this took place in close proximity to a country where the
reverse was the evident fact. There are such rotten spots still upon
this earth--one just across our doorstep on the Rio Grande, and
somebody some day must clean that house, too.
Added to all this, and much more, was the fact that the city of
Santiago had been besieged by land and by sea. Thus naturally even the
conditions in this cesspool were intensely exaggerated.
Into such a plague-stricken, starving city on the 20th of July, 1898,
Wood, then Brigadier General of United States Volunteers, thirty-seven
{107} years of age, fresh from the job of army surgeon to the
President in the White House, some Indian fighting in the Southwest
and the task of getting the Rough Riders organized into fighting
shape--fresh from the fighting that had taken place on and since July
1st--into this situation on July 20th General Wood was summoned by
General Shafter, commanding the American forces, with the information
that he had been detailed to take command of the city, secure and
maintain order, feed the starving and reorganize generally.
Why he was selected may be easily guessed. He was a military man who
had made good recently, who had made good in the Southwest, whom the
President knew and trusted--and he was a doctor who had just shown
great organizing ability. The job itself was as new to him as would
have been the task in those days of flying. But with his inherited and
acquired sense of values, of the essentials of life, with his
education and his characteristic passion for getting ready he started
at once to pull off the wall paper, hammer away the plaster and
examine the condition of the beams which supported this leaning,
tottering, {108} out-of-repair wing of the world's house of
civilization.
What he found was rotten beams; no integrity of family; no respect for
or responsibility to the state; no sense on the part of the citizens
of what they owed to themselves, or their families, or their city--not
the slightest idea of what government of the people for the people by
the people meant. 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. That seems to be the
characteristic of Wood--that while he started to cure the illness, he
at the same time started to get ready to prevent its recurrence. And
there we may perhaps discover something of the reason for his success,
something of the reason why people lean on him and {109} look to him
for advice and support in time of trouble.