d be impaired if the chief
credit were not given, _primus inter pares_, to the great American
administrator, conquering soldier and constructive statesman, who from
first to last was the guiding genius of Cuban rehabilitation.

The works of Durham in Canada, and of Cromer in Egypt, form splendid
passages in the history of benevolent colonial administration. But there
was a more difficult work performed not for a dependent colony which
would return compensation to the Mother Country or to the suzerain power
but for an alien land and people, presently to become entirely
independent of their benefactor. He found the Pearl of the Antilles
war-ravaged and faction-rent; her fields desolated, her industries
destroyed; her women widowed and her children orphaned; her treasury
empty and her debts heavy and pressing; her government abolished and her
laws inadequate; with famine, pestilence and hopelessness stalking
throughout the land. It was his work to heal the wounds of war and to
unite the people of all classes and parties for the common good; to
assist the revival of agriculture and the rebuilding of industry; to
care for the widowed and the orphaned; to replenish the public treasury
and to discharge the debt of honor to the veterans of the War of
Independence; to organize efficient government and out of his own
constructive genius to conceive and to promulgate needed and beneficent
laws; to feed the hungry until they could feed themselves, to banish
pestilence until a lazar-house became a health resort, and to inspire
with hope and faith triumphant a people who for a generation had striven
with the demons of despair.

With such a labor successfully achieved, through the exercise of a tact,
a perseverance, a resourcefulness and an administrative genius not
surpassed in his day and generation, we may not wonder that he was
universally beloved by all the Cuban people regardless of class, of
previous condition or of political predilections; that the only cloud
resting upon the brilliance of the consummation of Cuban independence
proceeded from the fact of his departure from the island and the people
he had so greatly served; and that, not waiting for the slow tributes of
remote posterity, the Cuban people of his own day hold in their
supremest confidence, gratitude, respect and enduring affection the
name, the memory and the vital personality of Leonard Wood.

President Palma had already selected the members of his Cabinet on