eld extends a landscape-seascape, representing
the ocean, with Florida at one side and Yucatan at the other, while
between them lies the Key, Cuba. From the far horizon rises the sun.
Above all is the Cap of Liberty, while around the shield are twined
branches of oak and laurel.

No more just and fitting estimate of the great work of intervention
which thus, on May 20, 1902, was consummated, has ever been made than
that which was uttered only a few weeks later by President Roosevelt, in
speaking before a distinguished audience at Harvard University. He said:

"Four years ago Leonard Wood went down to Cuba, has served there ever
since, has rendered her literally invaluable service; a man who through
these four years thought of nothing else, did nothing else, save to try
to bring up the standard of political and social life in that island, to
clean it physically and morally, to make justice even and fair in it, to
found a school system which should be akin to our own, to teach the
people after four centuries of misrule that there were such things as
government righteousness and honesty and fair play for all men on their
merits as men."

That was the work which Leonard Wood did in Cuba; that was the work
which the United States government did by and through him; the
consummation of which was denoted in that unique act of withdrawing the
American flag and raising the Cuban flag in its place. Fortunate was it,
however, that the results of that work, the teachings of the American
occupation, the meaning of the American flag, were not and could not be
withdrawn when the Stars and Stripes came down. Just as the colors and
indeed the essential pattern of the flag remained, in different
arrangement, so the essential spirit of American republicanism remained,
to be manifested not any longer by American interveners but by the Cuban
people themselves.

It was a marvellous achievement, that of those four years. It was such
as the world had not seen equalled, at any other time or in any other
place. It was creditable in the highest degree to the Cuban people
themselves. It was creditable to the United States, for its intervention
at its own great cost and for its scrupulous keeping of its faith. It
was creditable to many individual actors in the great drama, both
insular and continental, who displayed unsurpassed fidelity,
self-sacrifice and heroism in the cause of Cuban liberation. But the
simple truth and justice of history woul