ginning his army life in 1886 as an army surgeon he rose in
twenty-two years to the highest position in the regular army that any
one can hold. That, in a sense, closes a certain {197} period in
General Wood's career. For when in 1914 he was again made Commander of
the Department of the East he had already started upon his campaign of
national preparation which had been growing and growing in his mind as
he lived and served his own nation and observed and studied other
nations. The knowledge he had acquired in the four quarters of the
earth showed to him conclusively that a nation must be ready to resist
attack in order to live in peace, and yet that that nation must not
spend all its wealth and time and brains in building up a military
machine. In a strange way the attitude of this New England "Mayflower"
descendant resembled the attitude of his own native Cape Cod, which
stands at the outposts of New England with its clenched fist ready and
prepared, yet which lives on quietly in the lives of its inhabitants
who proceed in peace with their commercial occupations and their
family existence.

{198}

{199}

THE PATRIOT

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{201}

VIII

THE PATRIOT

"There are many things man cannot buy and one of them is time. It
takes time to organize and prepare. Time will only be found in periods
of peace. Modern war gives no time for preparation. Its approach is
that of the avalanche and not of the glacier.

"We must remember that this training is not a training for war alone.
It really is a training for life, a training for citizenship in time
of peace.

"We must remember that it is better to be prepared for war and not
have it, then to have war and not to be prepared for it."

Such sentiments quoted from General Wood's many speeches and writings
might be continued until they alone made a volume--a book of the Creed
of the Patriot. For in his crusade up and down our land for the last
six years he has developed an unsuspected ability for epigrammatic
phraseology, for stating in concise, homely {202} language the
principle that no one in any successful operation has failed to get
ready. This was unsuspected in him, because up to 1913 he had had
little to say outside of his official reports. His motto of doing the
thing without talking about it had been followed to the letter by
himself.

When he finally arrived at a position which was important and powerful
enough to give him an opportunity for p