Cod, where the formative years of Leonard Wood's life
were passed, is a sand bank left by some melting glacier sticking out
into the Atlantic in the shape of a doubled-up arm with a clenched
fist as if it were ready at any moment to strike out and defend New
England against any attack that might come from the eastward. Those
who call it their native place have acquired {16} something of its
spirit. They have ever been ready to oppose any aggression from the
eastward or any other direction, and they have ever been ready to
stand firmly upon the conviction that the integrity of the family and
of the state must be maintained. And young Wood from them and from his
Mayflower Pilgrim ancestors absorbed and was born with a common sense
and a directness of vision that have appeared throughout his life
under whatever conditions he found himself.

There seems to have been nothing remarkable about him either in his
boyhood or in his youth. He achieved nothing out of the ordinary
through that whole period. But there has always been in him somewhere,
the solid basis of sense and reason which kept him to whatever purpose
he set himself to achieve along the lines of the great elemental
truths of life and far away from visionary hallucinations of any sort.
If it was Indian fighting, he worked away at the basis of the question
and got ready and then carried out. If it was war, the same. If it was
administration, he {17} studied the essentials, prepared for them, and
then carried them out.

Like all great achievements, it is simplicity itself and can be told
in words of one syllable. In all lines of his extraordinarily varied
career extending over all the corners of the globe he respected and
built up authority of government and protected and encouraged the
development of the family unit. One might say "Why not? Of course."
The answer is "Who in this country in the last thirty years has done
it to anything like the same extent?"

Many minds during this time have advanced new ideas; many men have
invented amazing things; many able people have opened up new avenues
of thought and vision to the imagination of the world, sometimes to
good and lasting purpose, sometimes otherwise. But who has taken
whatever problem was presented to him and invariably, no matter what
quality was required, brought that problem to a successful conclusion
without upheaval, or chaos, or even much excitement for any one
outside the immediately interested group?