able advantage to that country and to its relations
with the United States and with the world. Indeed, though the fact was
unrecognized at the time, it is not too much to say that Leonard Wood
bore in his hand and mind and heart the destinies of Cuba. There might,
it is true, have been found some other man who as a soldier would have
pacified the island and would have held it firmly in the grasp of peace.
There might have been found a sanitarian and physician who would free
the island of pestilence. There were financiers who might have placed
its fiscal interests upon a sound basis. There were jurists who could
have revised its laws. There were statesmen who could have supervised
and directed its general governmental affairs, both domestic and
foreign. But there was need that all these qualities should be combined
in and all these activities should be performed by one man.

Leonard Wood was at this time still a young man, scarcely thirty-eight
years of age. Born at Winchester, New Hampshire, the son of an eminent
physician and a descendant of a Mayflower Pilgrim, he had in boyhood
engaged in seafaring pursuits, and then had been thoroughly trained for
the medical profession at Harvard University. Obeying the promptings of
patriotism, perhaps with some unrecognized pre-intimation of the vast
services which he was destined to render to his country and to the
world, he turned away from prospects of professional preferment and
profit to undertake the arduous and often thankless tasks of an army
surgeon. He was appointed to that duty from the state of Massachusetts
on January 5, 1886, as an Assistant Surgeon, and five years later was
promoted to the rank of Captain. The nominal rank is, however, a slight
indication of the merit of his services, for in the very first year of
his army life he was credited with "distinguished conduct in campaign
against Apache Indians while serving as medical and line officer of
Captain Lawton's expedition"; for which he was later awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor.

At the beginning of American intervention in the Cuban War of
Independence, Theodore Roosevelt resigned the office of Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, which he had filled with distinction and to the
great profit of the country, in order to organize from among the cowboys
and frontiersmen of the West his famous regiment of "Rough Riders." But
he would not himself accept the supreme command of it. His unerring
judgment of men