It is not genius; it is organization. It is not {18} the flare of
inventive ability; it is the high vision of one whose code rested
always on elemental, sound and enduring principles and who has not
swerved from these to admire the plaster and the paper on the wall. It
is finally the great quality that makes a man keep his feet on the
ground and his heart amongst the bright stars.

Of such stuff are the men of this world made whom people lean on, whom
people naturally look to in emergency, who guide instinctively and
unerringly, carrying always the faith of those about them because they
deal with sound things, elemental truths and sane methods--because
they give mankind what Leonard Wood's greatest friend called "a square
deal."

It is difficult to treat much of his youth because he is still living
and the family life of any man is his own and not the public's
business. But there is a certain interest attaching to his life-work
for his country in knowing that his great-great-grandfather commanded
a regiment in the Revolutionary army at Bunker Hill and that his
father was a doctor who served in the Union army during the Civil War.
Out of such heredity has {19} come a doctor who is a Major General in
the United States Army.

At the same time his own life on Cape Cod outside of school at the
Middleboro Academy was marked by what might distinguish any youngster
of that day and place--a strong liking for small boating, for games
out of doors, for riding, shooting and fishing. These came from a fine
healthy body which to this day at his present age is amazing in its
capacity to carry him through physical work. He can to-day ride a
hundred miles at a stretch and walk thirty miles in any twenty-four
hours.

Later in life this was one of the many points of common interest that
drew him and Theodore Roosevelt so closely together. It has no
particular significance other than to make it possible for him in many
lands at many different limes to do that one great thing which makes
men leaders--to show his men the way, to do himself whatever he asked
others to do, never to give an order whether to a military, sanitary,
medical or administrative force that he could not and did not do
himself in so far as one man could do it.

{20}

There was little or no money in the Wood family and the young man had
to plan early to look out for himself. He wanted to go to
sea--probably because he lived on Cape Cod and came from a long li