w that might be promulgated.

The integrity of the family and its right to live as it chose within
restrictions required by gregarious existence had disappeared--never
had existed at all so far as those living knew. The responsibility of
the individual to his government was unconceivable and inconceivable.

Had all this not been so there would have been {106} no war on our
part with Spain, for the whole origin of the trouble which eventually
led to war grew out of the final despair of men and women in Cuba who
gradually came to realize in a dim way that something was wrong and
unfair. Out of this grew internal dissension which constantly spilled
over to interfere with international relations.

It was the inevitable breaking down of a civilization because of the
years during which civilization's laws had been disregarded, and
because all this took place in close proximity to a country where the
reverse was the evident fact. There are such rotten spots still upon
this earth--one just across our doorstep on the Rio Grande, and
somebody some day must clean that house, too.

Added to all this, and much more, was the fact that the city of
Santiago had been besieged by land and by sea. Thus naturally even the
conditions in this cesspool were intensely exaggerated.

Into such a plague-stricken, starving city on the 20th of July, 1898,
Wood, then Brigadier General of United States Volunteers, thirty-seven
{107} years of age, fresh from the job of army surgeon to the
President in the White House, some Indian fighting in the Southwest
and the task of getting the Rough Riders organized into fighting
shape--fresh from the fighting that had taken place on and since July
1st--into this situation on July 20th General Wood was summoned by
General Shafter, commanding the American forces, with the information
that he had been detailed to take command of the city, secure and
maintain order, feed the starving and reorganize generally.

Why he was selected may be easily guessed. He was a military man who
had made good recently, who had made good in the Southwest, whom the
President knew and trusted--and he was a doctor who had just shown
great organizing ability. The job itself was as new to him as would
have been the task in those days of flying. But with his inherited and
acquired sense of values, of the essentials of life, with his
education and his characteristic passion for getting ready he started
at once to pull off the wall pap