er, hammer away the plaster and
examine the condition of the beams which supported this leaning,
tottering, {108} out-of-repair wing of the world's house of
civilization.

What he found was rotten beams; no integrity of family; no respect for
or responsibility to the state; no sense on the part of the citizens
of what they owed to themselves, or their families, or their city--not
the slightest idea of what government of the people for the people by
the people meant. The government was robbing the family. The family
was robbing the government. That was the fundamental place to begin,
if this wing of the house was not to fall.

Naturally the immediate and crying needs had to be corrected at once.
But Wood began all on the same day on the beams as well as on the
plaster and wall paper--this 20th day of July, 1898. Another man might
well have forgotten or never have thought of the fundamentals in the
terrible condition within his immediate vision. That seems to be the
characteristic of Wood--that while he started to cure the illness, he
at the same time started to get ready to prevent its recurrence. And
there we may perhaps discover something of the reason for his success,
something of the reason why people lean on him and {109} look to him
for advice and support in time of trouble.

These immediate needs were inconceivable to those who lived in orderly
places and orderly times. Of the 50,000 inhabitants, 16,000 were sick.
There were in addition 2,000 sick Spanish soldiers and 5,000 sick
American troops. Over all in the hot haze of that tropical city hung
the terror of yellow fever, showing its sinister face here and there.
At the same time a religious pilgrimage to a nearby shrine taken at
this moment by 18,000 people led to an immense increase in disease
because of the bad food and the polluted water which the pilgrims ate
and drank. In the streets piles of filth and open drains were mixed
with the dead bodies of animals. Houses, deserted because of deaths,
held their dead--men, women and children--whom no one removed and no
one buried. All along the routes approaching the city bodies lay by
the roadside, the living members of the family leaving their dead
unburied because they were too weak and could only drag themselves
along under the tropic sun in the hope that they {110} might reach
their homes before they, too, should die.

This was enhanced by the fact of the siege and the consequent lack of
food. The sick co