THE CABINET: In Manila

More than 20 years ago, in the White House, Theodore Roosevelt sat chatting with Leonard Wood after a stiff fencing bout. Leonard Wood had recently completed a health-harassing, nerve-defying job which history may well record as the most brilliant proconsulship of the age. (History is even now saying that in four years Leonard Wood advanced Cuban civilization four centuries.)

The two friends were talking about another U. S. colonial venture at the other end of the world, which had not prospered so well. In particular, the southern part of the Philippine archipelago known as the Department of Mindanao, stretching to Borneo, was in a state of completely uncontrolled savagery. It was inhabited by Moros — bloodthirsty, polygamous, Mohammedan headhunters — who lived in inaccessible fever-infected jungles Their pleasure was to raid, burn, slay, crucify, abduct. Their slave-hunts extended ip to Manila, their piracy for hundreds of miles. Spanish Captains-General, after three centuries of futile effort, had long since retired into a policy of bad-tempered neglect. The Moros ran wild.

"Whom, whom can I send to Mindanao?" asked Theodore Roosevelt.

"Why not send me?" said Leonard Wood.

"Bully! But it hardly seems fair to start you of? again so soon."

But before General Wood reached the Philippines, and more venomously after he got there, the old talk against him echoed. The General has always had to face criticism from Army people because he is a great civilian, and from civilians because he is a great soldier. But the story of how he won the confidence of U. 3. regulars in the Philippines reads like a tale of the Round Table. The General went at once himself where the germs were thickest, the bolos sharpest. For 18 months he was almost daily in peril of life. When he finished, he was the idol of his troops, the deadliest chieftains were captured or dead, the Moros for the first time in history were living at peace with themselves and others, under the aegis of the Great White Sultan, which title they bestowed upon him with awe and affection.

General Wood returned to the U. S. Years passed — years of labor, then years of disappointment. In 1917-18 there were, of course, the snubs from President Wilson. Europeans waited for General Wood to come at the head of the U. S. Armies. But the President would not even send him as the head of a brigade.

Then, in 1920, came the badly managed campaign for the presidency. The General can handle almost anything from a vicious garbage situation in Havana to a strike in Gary, Ind., or a gentleman's Plattsburg. And always he has been more statesman than Tsar. But one thing he cannot do. He cannot explain himself. He cannot express things. He canot touch emotion with winged words. In conversation he is witty, but on the platform he is dull, heavy, too careful of his facts, not sufficiently boisterous. "Do things, but don't boast about them" is his motto. So neither he nor his rich backers (primarily Procter, Ivory Soap man) could sell him to the politicians. It was deep disappointment. Theodore was dead. Was Leonard, too?