to strike quick and
hard if, as we believed would be the case, we went to war with Spain.
Sending an ample quantity of ammunition to the Asiatic squadron and
providing it with coal; getting the battle-ships and the armored
cruisers on the Atlantic into one squadron, both to train them in
manoeuvring together, and to have them ready to sail against either
the Cuban or the Spanish coasts; gathering the torpedo-boats into a
flotilla for practice; securing ample target exercise, so conducted as
to raise the standard of our marksmanship; gathering in the small
ships from European and South American waters; settling on the number
and kind of craft needed as auxiliary cruisers--every one of these
points was threshed over in conversations with officers who were
present in Washington, or in correspondence with officers who, like
Captain Mahan, were absent.

As for the Senators, of course Senator Lodge and I felt precisely
alike; for to fight in such a cause and with such an enemy was merely
to carry out the doctrines we had both of us preached for many years.
Senator Davis, Senator Proctor, Senator Foraker, Senator Chandler,
Senator Morgan, Senator Frye, and a number of others also took just
the right ground; and I saw a great deal of them, as well as of many
members of the House, particularly those from the West, where the
feeling for war was strongest.

Naval officers came and went, and Senators were only in the city while
the Senate was in session; but there was one friend who was steadily
in Washington. This was an army surgeon, Dr. Leonard Wood. I only met
him after I entered the navy department, but we soon found that we had
kindred tastes and kindred principles. He had served in General
Miles's inconceivably harassing campaigns against the Apaches, where
he had displayed such courage that he won that most coveted of
distinctions--the Medal of Honor; such extraordinary physical strength
and endurance that he grew to be recognized as one of the two or three
white men who could stand fatigue and hardship as well as an Apache;
and such judgment that toward the close of the campaigns he was given,
though a surgeon, the actual command of more than one expedition
against the bands of renegade Indians. Like so many of the gallant
fighters with whom it was later my good fortune to serve, he combined,
in a very high degree, the qualities of entire manliness with entire
uprightness and cleanliness of character. It was a pleasure