ers looking towards the latter contingency
were not wanting. He was, in fact, asked to take a business position,
which offered him forty thousand a year. Here was a large income for a
man of forty-two, regular work of an interesting sort, security and a
clear future for himself and his family. Instead, he accepted the
appointment to the Philippines which meant and indeed, as the outcome
showed, actually involved more than a hundred military engagements
amongst the natives of the islands in many of which he risked his
life.

Here again he took the road of service to his country as he had each
time the ways divided since the day when as a young doctor he entered
the army. No one but he himself can tell in detail just the reasons
which led to this decision, but in the main they were the instinctive
desire for action, for execution and for the open road, which then as
now swayed him in all his actions and decisions. Then, too, he felt
that since {162} Roosevelt was President, criticisms of their
relations in political circles might readily arise, as indeed did
occur later; and lest their friendship should be misunderstood he took
the Philippine appointment--applied for it, even--in order that being
thus out of the country, cause for any such occurrences might perhaps
be avoided.

It is always interesting to look back through the career of such a man
and speculate on the chance or wise decision which caused the choice
of the right road or the left road at such a time. Neither Wood nor
Roosevelt could possibly know or foresee that this decision would
furnish the former with the material which eventually led to his doing
more than all the rest of the United States put together to start
preparation for the Great War. Neither of them could have guessed that
his administration in the Philippines would bring out further
qualities in Wood which showed the statesman as well as the
administrator in him.

What might have happened otherwise is again a futile
speculation--perhaps something to bring him still more before the
people of his country, perhaps less--yet it may be safely said,
judging {163} from history and biography the world over, that it is
probable no road he might have taken would have suppressed Leonard
Wood's executive and administrative qualities. Indeed the fact that
for practically thirty years he has been in the army, that he is a
soldier in every inch of his big body, has never even to this day made
him a mili