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.
At the same time he had the opportunity by invitation of seeing the
German and French {208} armies mobilized at the time of the
Bosnia-Herzegovina episode when all Europe was on the verge of war.
The German army of maneuver was at Saarbruecken--ready. Practically the
whole of the French army of maneuver was on the Loire--ready. He saw
one immediately after the other--less than two days apart. Mr. White,
then American Ambassador to France, asked him what he thought of the
French army and his answer was that despite the fame of the German
military machine France in the next war would surprise the world by
the fitting effectiveness of her forces. He based this conclusion on
the relation of officers and men and the discipline founded on respect
and confidence rather than fear of officers.
Then followed the centenary mission to the Argentine and a couple of
years as Chief of Staff of the American army before he could
effectively begin his campaign.
The first gun was a letter sent out by Wood under permission of the
Secretary of War which proposed to many presidents of colleges and
universities in the United States the establishment of several
experimental military training camps {209} for students. These camps
were to be placed one on the historic field of Gettysburg and the
other at the Presidio of Monterey, California. The former opened on
July 7th and closed on August 15th, and the latter extended from July
1st to August 8th. In all 222 students took this training, 159 at
Gettysburg and 68 in Monterey.
It was the first trial, and it was a very small and insignificant
response. Indeed it gives a good idea of the importance in which
military preparedness was held in this country at that moment--
100,000,000 inhabitants; 222 volunteers.
Those were the days when the people of this land and many others were
hard at work upon commercial pursuits and when for amusement the world
and his wife danced tango to ragtime music. So-called alarmists cried
"Look out for war!" Major Du Maurier of the British army wrote a play
called "An Englishman's Home," which startled and puzzled Englishmen
for a while, but could not carry an audience for one week in this
country. Nobody took any interest in what his neighbor was doing, to
say nothing of what Germany or any other countries were planning.
{210}
Yet Wood was not discouraged. He was started on a long campaign and he
knew he had to prepare to prepare. Furthermore the men in the
universities who could see ahead came forward in his support and in
support of the idea. Four years later President Drinker of Lehigh
University wrote of the amazing success of the movement: "We owe it
largely to Major-General Wood's farsightedness as a man of affairs and
to his great qualities as a soldier and patriot, that our country was
awakened to the need of preparedness, and this beginning of military
training in our youth was due wholly to his initiative." [Footnote:
_National Service Magazine_.]
Small as the beginning was it was a plant with the germ of strength in
it, since at this first camp in Gettysburg the members formed then in
1913 the Society of the National Reserve Corps of the United States.
Wood at once cooperated with this slender offshoot and gave it all the
support in his power. He sent letters as Chief of Staff of the Regular
Army to college presidents at the same time that the president of the
new Corps did so--both suggesting an advisory committee to {211}
assist the government in the encouragement and practical advancement
of the training camp idea. This committee was formed and Presidents
Hibben of Princeton and Drinker of Lehigh were elected president and
secretary. The committee with these officers in charge gave assistance
to Wood in his organizing work so that out of the small beginnings in
the two camps an enormous organization arose which trained tens of
thousands of young men to be officers and made the immense expansion
of the little American army to 4,000,000 soldiers possible.
Pushing always quietly but unremittingly ahead Wood helped these
officers to increase the camps from two to four in the summer of
1914--in Vermont, Michigan, North Carolina and California--with a
total attendance of 667 students.
Then came the Great War and the beginning of the work on a large
scale. From college students, who reported on the interest and
pleasure which they got out of the summer camp, the life in the open
and the military instruction afforded by regular army men, the
movement extended to business men, lawyers, preachers and so on. Wood
{212} opened the Plattsburg camp on Lake Champlain to the latter and
started the first business man's camp. Each man paid his own railway
fares, his own living expenses while in camp and bought his uniform
and equipment, except arms, with his own money.
That year (1915) 3,406 men attended the five camps. In 1916 six camps
were opened and 16,139 men attended them. At the close of the first
Plattsburg camp the business men formed an organization for furthering
and extending this training just as the college men had done at
Gettysburg two years before. And in 1916 these two organizations
consolidated and organized the present Military Training Camps
Association of the United States.
All through this period, taking advantage of the European war, drawing
lessons from the tragic happenings just across the Atlantic, Wood went
about the country, as little "Bobs" of Kandahar had previously done in
England, speaking in halls, in camps, in churches, at clubs, at
festivals, on special and unspecial occasions of all kinds. He drove
home the subject which he knew so well and others knew hardly at all.
He met all comers of {213} every grade in arguments and debates--those
who were constitutional objectors, pacifists, people who thought
arbitration much more effective, people too proud to fight or too busy
to get ready--all comers of all kinds. And the Great War day by day
helped him. He spent his summers going from one camp to another,
traveling all over the United States.
At six in the morning he would appear in one of them ready for
inspection, and any day anywhere where there was a camp one might see
him in the early morning sunshine, or the early morning rain striding
up one company street and down another followed by new and old
officers, peering into this dog tent and that kitchen, examining this
man's rifle and that man's kit, praising, criticizing and jamming
enthusiasm in two hours into a group of a thousand men in a manner
they knew not how, nor clearly understood. It was just what he had
done in Cuba, just what he had done in the Philippines where he had
organized drilling, athletic and condition-of-equipment competitions
in each company, each regiment, each brigade, each division--one
pitted against another, all at it hot and heavy; {214} not because
Wood came along and looked them over, but because when he did look
them over he could spot any weakness in any part of the work with
unerring certainty--not alone because he could spot any weakness, but
because he knew a good point when he saw it and gave credit where
credit was due.
It is perhaps not out of place here to look back in the light of
events which occurred afterwards and are now a part of history and
secure an estimate of what this work did for this country in awakening
the people to a sense of the critical situation, to prepare an army
which should do its part in the world war, to bring that army into
line in France at what seems to have been a critical moment and to
help bring the war itself to a successful conclusion in conjunction
with the Allied armies which had held on so long against such terrific
odds.
The purpose of the camps and what they will lead to in time of peace
and did lead to in time of war is perhaps best shown in one of General
Wood's statements: "The ultimate object sought is not in any way one
of military aggrandizement, {215} but to provide in some degree a
means of meeting a vital need confronting us as a peaceful and
unmilitary people, in order to preserve the desired peace and
prosperity through the only safe precaution, viz.: more thorough
preparation and equipment to resist any effort to break the peace."
That at a time when there was no European War in sight.
Now consider General Pershing's report of Nov. 21, 1918--after the
close of the war. The first American air force using American
aeroplanes went into action in France, that is to say in the war, in
August, 1918--16 months after the declaration of war by the United
States and four years after the beginning of the war itself. During
the entire time that the United States was in the war, a little over
19 months, not one single American field gun was fired at the enemy
and only 109 had been received in Europe at all. No American tank was
ever used against the enemy in the whole war. Yet a month or six weeks
after the declaration of war troops began to go to Europe and at its
close in November, 1918, the army {216} consisted of 3,700,000 men, of
whom more than 203,000 were newly made officers. Half of this force at
least got over to the other side of the Atlantic and at least half of
them took part in the fighting at one time or another of the 19
months.
One would have said at the outset that a commercial nation like the
United States, filled with factories, mechanics and mechanically
inclined brains, could and would have made guns and aeroplanes and
uniforms far quicker than it made soldiers and officers. Yet such was
not the case.
A French officer here in America at that time studying American
mobilization said:
"I knew you recruited over 3,500,000 men in 19 months. That is very
good, but not so difficult. But I am told also that although you had
no officers reserve to start with you somehow found 200,000 new
officers, most of them competent. That is what is astonishing and what
was impossible. Tell me how that was done." [Footnote: _National
Magazine_]
There is only the one answer, that the officers' training camps
started in 1918 by Leonard Wood and fostered by him and the people of
this nation {217} who then and later agreed with him made the
impossible possible and made the new, raw army effective and in time.
It was what came to be known as the "Plattsburg Idea;" which, getting
really going first in May 16, 1917, as a regular part of the United
States mobilization, did its work before arms and ammunition were
ready, before uniforms could be had, before camps had been even laid
out and before the first draft had been taken. At that time 40,000
selected men were in training for officers' positions in sixteen
camps. That is to say, in 40 days 150,000 applications had been
received, 100,000 men examined and 40,000 passed as fit and ready for
training.
It was the work in 1913, 1914, 1915 and 1916. It was the Plattsburg
idea adapted to war conditions. Without it the situation regarding men
might easily have been the same as the situation regarding guns,
aeroplanes and uniforms.
Plattsburg, being in New York State, naturally became the type of
camp, since in 1914 Wood, having been relieved of his position as
Chief of Staff, was detailed to command the Department of the East
with his headquarters on Governor's {218} Island in New York Harbor.
He no sooner took up this new work than the Department of the East,
where fifty-six per cent, of the National Guard of the whole country
was included, became a seething office of energy and work. In so far
as the training camp idea went this energy was centered in Plattsburg.
At the same time General Wood inaugurated the Massachusetts National
Guard Maneuvers--the first of their kind held in this country--and
added a water attack on Boston. He also assisted Governor Whitman in
putting through the New York State Legislature the bills creating the
State Military Training Commission, under whose management all boys
between the ages of sixteen and eighteen undergo a simple but
effective training in the rudiments of military tactics and receive
the athletic training of a short camp life each year--all involving
the inculcation of the principles of discipline, of order and of self
care.
Thus the history of the way in which the Government of the United
States, when war was eventually declared, secured its officers is
told. {219} One might go into detail, but the main facts are not
altered by any amount of detail. They stand out clearly--the awakening
of our land in time by the energy and patriotic spirit of one man,
supplemented by the untold amount of work accomplished at his
suggestion by thousands of patriotic American citizens.
And in the midst of this work before war was declared General Wood, as
a part of his plan of preparedness, asked some ten or twelve men to
come to Plattsburg at different times to speak to the student
officers. Among these men he included the two living ex-presidents of
the United States--Mr. Taft and Colonel Roosevelt. He first submitted
the list of speakers to the War Department so that the Department
might eliminate any one of them who for any reason should appear to be
undesirable.
After two weeks, having had no reply, he sent out the invitations and
from time to time these speakers came and addressed the members of the
different camps.
Roosevelt on his arrival at Plattsburg handed to Wood the speech he
proposed to deliver; and {220} in view of the known critical attitude
which the former took towards the administration Wood asked two other
army officers to go over the proposed speech with him and help him to
eliminate anything which might be questioned upon such an occasion.
The address was delivered at about five o'clock in the afternoon at
the camp and when it was finished Roosevelt was heartily congratulated
personally by many men of both political parties, among them two
distinguished Democrats--John Mitchel, Mayor of New York, and Dudley
Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York.
After dinner Roosevelt left in the evening to go into the city of
Plattsburg, a mile or two away from the camp, to take the midnight
train for New York. As he stood on the platform of the railway station
some time after eleven in the evening he was interviewed by the
newspaper reporters. No military person was present. What he said was
given out on territory not under military jurisdiction and it had
nothing to do with the Plattsburg speech. Roosevelt spoke to the
newspaper men in his usual forcible fashion:
"In the course of his speech he remarked that {221} for thirteen
months the United States had played an ignoble part among the nations,
had tamely submitted to seeing the weak, whom we had covenanted to
protect, wronged; had seen our men, women and children murdered on the
high seas 'without action on our part,' and had used elocution as a
substitute for action. 'Reliance upon high sounding words unbacked by
deeds,' said he, 'is proof of a mind that dwells only in the realm of
shadow and of sham.' Under the Hague Convention it was our duty to
prevent, and, if not to prevent, then to undo, the hideous wrong that
was done in Belgium, but we had shirked this duty. He denounced
hyphenated Americans, professional pacifists and those who would
substitute arbitration treaties for an army, or the platitudes of
peace congresses for military preparedness."
The next day Wood received a telegraphic reprimand from the Government
in Washington. "In this telegram of disapproval. Secretary Garrison
said it was difficult to conceive of anything which could have a more
detrimental effect than such an incident. The camp, held under the
{222} Government auspices, was conveying its own impressive lesson in
its practical and successful operation and results. 'No opportunity
should have been furnished to any one to present to the men any matter
except that which was essential to the necessary training they were to
receive. Anything else could only have the effect of distracting
attention from the real nature of the experiment, diverting
consideration to issues which excite controversy, antagonism and
ill-feeling, and thereby impairing, if not destroying, what otherwise
would have been so effective.' General Wood replied, as follows: 'Your
telegram received, and the policy laid down will be rigidly adhered
to.'" [Footnote: _The Independent_.]
{223}
THE GREAT WAR
{224}
{225}
IX
THE GREAT WAR
On April 6, 1917, war having been that week declared by the United
States against Germany, Major-General Leonard Wood, ranking officer in
the United States Army--that is to say, the man occupying the senior
position in our army--being then in sound health of mind and body and
fifty-six years of age, wrote and personally delivered two identical
letters, one to the Adjutant-General of the Army and the other to the
Chief of Staff, requesting assignment for military service abroad.
No acknowledgment or reply was ever received from either source.
Early in April he received notice that the Department of the East of
which he was then commander was abolished and in its place three new
and smaller departments created, in spite of vigorous protests by
several Governors of Atlantic States. He was offered any one of the
following {226} three military positions that he might select--the
Philippines, Hawaii or the "less important post" at Charleston, South
Carolina.
He at once selected the post at Charleston.
On May 12th he proceeded to Charleston and began the organization of
the Southeastern Department. In the months immediately following he
had selected and laid out eleven large training camps and had taken
charge of the supervision of three officers' training camps, one at
Oglethorpe, one at Atlanta and one at Little Rock.
On August 26th he received orders to proceed to Camp Funston in Kansas
to command the cantonment there and train for service a division of
national troops designated as the 89th Division.
Towards the end of the year he was ordered to proceed to Europe to
observe the military operations of the war. Leaving Camp Funston the
day before Thanksgiving, he landed in Liverpool on Christmas Day,
1917. In London he called by invitation upon General Robertson, the
British Chief of Staff, and upon his old friend, Sir John French. He
then proceeded to Paris on December 31, and between January 2nd and
14th, 1918, {227} went over the British front with Generals Cator and
Rawlinson. On the 16th he was at Soissons with the French.
For the next few days the examination of the French front continued at
and near the Chemin des Dames sector.
On January 27th he went with some French officers and men and a number
of American officers to look into the work of the 6th French army
training school, where artillery practice was in progress at
Fere-en-Tardenois. He was standing behind a mortar, the center man of
the five officers watching the gun crew fire the mortar, when a shell
burst, or detonated, inside the gun.
The entire gun crew was blown to pieces. The four officers on either
side of General Wood were killed. He himself received a wound in the
muscles of the left arm and lost part of the right sleeve of his
tunic. Six fragments of the shell passed through his clothing and two
of them killed the officers on either side of him. He was the only man
within a space of twelve feet of the mortar who was not instantly
killed. Many were wounded, including two others of our own officers.
{228}
After a night in the field first-aid hospital, where his arm was
dressed, he motored approximately a hundred miles to Paris the next
day and went into the French officers' hospital in the Hotel Ritz.
This hospital was in the old portion of the Ritz Hotel. General Wood
was the first foreign officer to be admitted to it. It was full of
wounded French officers and men from the different fronts; some of
them from Salonika; some sent back from Germany, hopelessly crippled,
and held as unfit for further service by the Germans; and many from
the Western front.
Here he got very near the soul of the French Army and came in touch
with that indomitable spirit which made that army fight best and
hardest when things looked darkest. Thanks to an excellent physical
condition he made a rapid recovery, described by French surgeons as
found only among the very young. He was a guest of the French
Government while at the hospital and received every possible courtesy.
On the 16th of February after having talked with many of the French
officers in the hospital and called, at their request, upon
Clemenceau, President Poincare, Joffre and {229} others, he left Paris
entirely cured of his slight wound and proceeded to the headquarters
of the French Army of the North at Vizay. There he met and talked with
Generals D'Esperey and Gourand, visited Rheims and Bar-le-duc and
spent the day of the 20th at Verdun.
During the next few days he visited the United States Army
headquarters at Chaumont and Toul and was back in Paris on the 26th,
when he received orders from the A. E. F. to return to the United
States by way of Bordeaux. On the 21st of March he arrived in New York
and was summoned four days later to appear before the Senate committee
on military affairs to report his observations.
He was then examined by the Mayo examining board, pronounced
absolutely fit physically and on April 12th resumed command of the
89th Division at Camp Funston, Kansas.
The training of this division was practically finished in late May and
the 89th was thereupon ordered abroad for service.
After seeing some of the elements of the division off for the
evacuation station at Camp Mills, Long {230} Island, New York, General
Wood left Funston himself and proceeded to Mills to see to the
reception of his division and look to its embarkation. He arrived at
the Long Island camp on May 25th and there found an order from the War
Department relieving him of his command of the 89th Division and
instructing him to proceed to San Francisco to assume command of the
Western Department. After finishing some necessary work he went to
Washington on the 27th and saw the Secretary of War. Little is known
of what took place at this conversation except that General Wood
requested that he be reinstated in his command of the 89th Division
and sent abroad, which was refused.
Wood saw the President, explained the situation and was told that the
latter would take the matter under consideration.
No consideration was ever reported.
Meantime the order sending him to California created such an uproar
throughout the United States that it was rescinded and General Wood
was ordered to Camp Funston again to train a new division--the
10th--which was ready to go {231} abroad when the armistice was signed
on November 11th.
This constitutes General Wood's services to his country during the
period of the war.
Much might be said in regard to this history. Much might be surmised
as to the causes which led to keeping the man who was the senior
officer of the army out of the war entirely. Much--very much--has been
said throughout this country in and out of print during the past two
years. The theory that he was too old for active service could not be
a reason, since he is younger than many general officers who did see
service abroad--younger as a matter of fact than General Pershing
himself. It is hardly conceivable that physical condition could have
been a reason, since at least twice in the last two years he has been
passed by expert physical examination boards in the regular routine of
army life and found sound, mentally and physically. He does, to be
sure, limp and has had to do so for years on account of an accident in
Cuba fifteen or sixteen years ago. Yet this could hardly unfit him for
service in France when it did not unfit him for service in the {232}
Philippine jungle, or the active life which he has led for the past
ten years.