ere all well known to the statesmen of these two countries who were
from their experience with colonial matters so well fitted to judge of
what he had accomplished along these lines.

General Wood's opinion as the result of his trip was that the American
troops should serve by divisions for a time with the French and
English rather than as a separate army from the start, {243} because
of the fact that all matters of supply, equipment, artillery, air
service and so on which were so incomplete in the American service and
so complete by this time in the British and French services would
apply to the Americans as well as to the others and that the training
alongside the veterans of over three years of war would make the
effectiveness of the American troops quicker, better and more
definite--would in the end increase efficiency and save life.

After having reported to the Senate committee and returned to Camp
Funston he took up with immeasurably renewed vigor the work of getting
the 89th Division, which he was to take abroad, ready for its service,
and all was prepared when the order came for them to move to New York
for embarkation. This work of transportation being practically
completed and the big division ready to go on board ship, Leonard Wood
felt that at last his chance to take his part in the war at the front
had come.

It is practically impossible for any one, therefore, to realize just
what it meant to him, or would have meant to any man, to receive
notification as {244} he was almost in the act of going on board the
transport that his command of the division he had trained and
organized was taken away from him, another officer put in his place
and he himself ordered to the farthest possible extremity of the
United States in the opposite direction. It is certainly impossible to
express here what his feelings were since nobody really knows them.

Imagination, however, which plays so important a part in this world's
affairs will play its part here as elsewhere, and some estimate of
what effect it had upon the country was shown in the outcry which
arose everywhere and which created such sudden wrath that the order
itself was immediately rescinded and changed to the Funston
appointment.

The character of men is exhibited in infinite ways and by infinite
methods, but never more surely than during critical periods when
passions run high and injustice seems to be in the saddle. It is
always at such times that reserv