Connecticut western news., 1920-03-25
LEONARD WOODS
 ACTIVE CAREER
Brief Story of His Life as Doctor, Soldier and Statesman-His
 Boyhood and Student Days.
By JOHN e. HoLME.


 On December F. 1899, Leonard Wood, a Major-General of Volunteers in the United States Army, received one of the most remarkable orders that any government has ever issued to any army officer.
 He was made Governor-Generalo of an island which for four hundred years had been a colonial dependency of one of the most reactionary mon- archies on the face of the earth and was commanded to train its million and a half inhabitants, who had never had any voice in their government, for republican, self-government. He was ordered to perform this gigantic task as quickly as possible, for the diplo- matic telescopes of all the govern ments of the world were trained on the United States and the island, which happened to be, in natural resources, probably the richest spot of its size on the globe. The governments of Eu- rope, Asia and South America wanted to know whether Uncle Sam really meant what he said when he pledged himself to free Cuba, or whether he. was really going to annex Cuba with her inexhaustible sugar bowl.
 The work before Wood was to build, rebuild and repair all the civil insti- tutions of Cuba, such as the courts, the customs and postal departments, the school and electoral systems, establish lines of communication, expel the cpl denies, train native public officials and supervise the writing of the Constitu- tion. When Cuba was able to stand on her own feet, Wood was to come home.
 Two years before the man who was commanded to perform this extraordi- i nary task had been an obscure army doctor with the rank and pay of a cap tain. He had distinguished himself in the Spanish-American War as Colonel of the Rough Riders, the famous regi- ment of aristocrats and cowpunchers of which Theodore Roosevelt later be- came the commander when Wood was advanced to the rank of Brigadier-Gen- eral. Wood had done a big job as Military-Governor of Santiago de Cuba, | and his success there had paved the ! way for his Governorship of all Cuba. Now that he looms big as Presidential possibility, the American people are more than ever interested in his ca reer, in the forces and influences which houo bic ootiua
 Leonard Wood was born in the vil- lage of Winchester, N. H., on October 9, 1860, and is therefore f1fty-nine years of age He comes of an old American stock which settled in New England long before the Revolution. One of his ancestors, Peregrine White, was the first white child born in Plymouth colony. Another ancestor, John Nixon, was one of Washington's Brigadiers, fighting through the Revo- lution. Leonard Woods father, Dr. Charles Jewett Wood, left his wife and infant son, the future General, to re- spond to Lincoln's first call for volun- teers. He was invalided home just be- fore the Confectionery surrendered.
 After the Civil War the family nov ed to Cape Cod Massachusetts, set tling in the village of Pocasset, where Leonard Wood grew up, attended the district school and later Pierce Acade- my, Middleboro, Mass. Here he dis Itinguished himself as an all-around athlete. He showed fondness for the languages and history. In his work he was persevering rather than ready.
 (To be continued)