y are
responsible for honest care, administration and thoughtfulness of
those who look to them as they look to their state. I have found that
where nothing but force will do the trick, force must be prepared and
ready in advance. I have seen innocent persons go under because they
were not ready to offset depredations. I have seen nations injured and
destroyed because they were not ready to resist force, whether that
force were used in a just or an unjust cause. And now I have arrived
at the place where I can prove this to a nation instead of to a
military platoon, or a military staff, or a few Cuban or Philippine
officials."

[Illustration: THE PATRIOT]

{205}

He might have said all this to himself--doubtless has done so many,
many times with much more to the same effect--but the outcome is a
witness of the fact that he has from a long and active life as
fighter, soldier, organizer, administrator, diplomat and statesman in
the West, the South, in Europe, in Asia, in Cuba, in the Philippines,
in South America, in Washington--in most parts of the earth--learned
again and again that nothing can be really done on the spur of the
moment, that everybody must prepare from school days to death. And in
1913 he had his first real opportunity to preach this nationally to
all the people of his own native land.

That within a year of that time prepared Germany should have upset the
world and found the British Empire, the French Republic and the
Italian Kingdom unprepared--to say nothing of the United States--may
have been one of the accidents--strokes of fortune--that some people
say have made General Wood. But it would seem that the only thing this
Great War did in this {206} connection was to prove by a terrific
example that Wood and those with him were right and that those who
were against him were wrong.

If the war had not come, it would have taken longer to awaken this
country to the facts and it would have delayed perhaps the growth of
General Wood's name as that of a national and international character
of highest importance. But it would not have changed the truth of his
Creed--or rather the creed of which he has become the great
protagonist. Nor does the fact that the war did come when it did give
any ground for making Wood one of the greatest citizens of our country
to-day because he preaches preparedness. General Wood stands at the
forefront of the leaders in America at this time because of his own
perso