The Leavenworth echo. [volume] (Leavenworth, Wash.) 1904-current, 1919-02-14
WANTED president FOR U.S..
IS LEONARD WOOD THE MAN :?
He Has Many Friends-The Unmer.
tied Slight Put on Him Will Help
His Nomination.

Both political parties are at sea
casting about for an available man for
president, especially since the death
of Roosevelt.
As an aftermath of the war there
has been a great deal of talk about
taking up a man of military exper-
fence for the position.
Col. Leonard Wood is a national fig
ure who is occupying a constantly
larger place in the hearts and minds
of the American people.
AS governor general of Porto Rico
and Cuba and in charge of the sani-
tary reconstruction of the Philippines
he got administrative training.
He was not only military hero at
Santiago but cleaned up the city of
Havana and stamped out the last ves-
tiges of yellow fever there.
He was one of a small party with
Captain Lawton who went into Mex
leo and won a medal from congress as
the fighting surgeon who took Ger
onimo.
He organized the civilian training
camp at Plattsburg and led in the
fight for national preparedness that
ended in the victory over Germany.
He went over to France and made
an independent report on conditions on
the western military front that forced
congress to act.
He was summoned three times be-
fore the senate committee on military
affairs and exposed inefficiency that
compelled speeding up war.
A New Highlander by birth, he is a
man of action with true westerner's
scope of vision and capacity for initia-
tive when initiative is necessary.
When he was first sent to Camp
Funston he found it an undrained bog
and ordered all the picks and shovels
in Kansas City and cleaned it up.
He found men without blankets and
ordered 10000 pairs at his own risk
and sent the bill to Washington and
it was paid without ceremony.
Col. Wood has way of cutting
right thru red tape and disentangling
ambiguous officialism with a clear
grasp of common sense that gets re-
suits.
At Camp Funston he was first to
introduce trade schools for enlisted
men to prepare them for taking full
part in reconstruction.
His work at Plattsburg was adopt
ed as basis for hundreds of civilian
camps, so his work at Camp Funston
is followed at other camps.
The west can probably not name the
next president but it will take kindly
to Woods western way of doing
things and thinking them.
The only man in the present admin
istration who takes western views is
Secretary Lane of the department of
the interior-born in Canada.
The west takes up nearly everything
that Secretary Lane proposes and
westerners generally regret that he is
barred from being candidate.
The western view point is all-impor-
tant when it is considered how for ten
years we have been hog-tied and hand
icapped by eastern policies.
Unless there is some weakness in
his armor of equipment for public SER
vice and political availability unknown
to the press, Col. Wood would do.
His life has been a strenuous one,
but he is a mighty good sport and has
never beefed, but took his medicine
when politics took him off the Eu
ropean battlefront.
The u. S. Senators took his reports
on weaknesses found in the army es-
Establishment because he had the cour-
age to tell the truth.
He was the apostle of preparedness
for two years before there was any
preparation to fit our country to de-
fend itself, and he was right.
He was first to tell the senate COM
mittee on military affairs that we
must put an army of 100000 men in
the field and he was right.
He was first to demand that the
armies at home be given vocational
training to fit them to take up the
work of civil life and he was right.
Leonard Wood is typical western
er as man of action and it is hard to
show that he is not what the west
wants in presidential timber.