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?

In 1921, a public which had nearly forgotten the Wood who captured Geronimo, the Wood who cleaned up Cuba, the Wood who hobnobbed with kings and kaisers, saw him depart for the Philippines with the rank of Governor General. Babbitts, great and small, gave but a slangy moment's pity to the man who had "missed out." For so it seemed. In the Philippines no glory could be gained.

And indeed when the General reached Manila he soon discovered that he would be lucky if he could serve a short term without getting his foot painfully caught in the complicated traps of the island politicians. His predecessor's liberal application of the Jones Act (which promised eventual independence) had bred local corruption so crude it was almost laughable and, according to some, a state approaching governmental chaos. Characteristically, the General said nothing, but began, by long hours of toil, to change all that. A visitor noting in his library stacks of weighty tomes concerning the Islands asked when he intended to read them. "Oh, I already have," replied the General.

Gradually authority asserted itself. Gradually, the General's personal likeableness was felt. Politicians Quezon and Osmena, furious because of the diminished power of their rhetoric, could not prevent it. So they began to flood the cables with anti-Wood gossip. They made local scenes which in far off Washington looked bad. They came personally to Congress with petitions railing against the General. Two years ago President Coolidge told them it was useless, told them in effect that it was impossible for them to make any sober individual in Washington believe that Governor General Wood was a tyrant, knave or fool.

And from Manila the cable flashed last week a speech which crowned perhaps the greatest triumph of the calm potency of Leonard Wood. The speech was from the lips of Emilo Aguinaldo. Concerning him, let it be remembered that in 1899 when the U. S. decided to hold the Philippines, he shot up a U. S. outpost and started an insurrection which lasted six times as long as the Spanish War, cost more than half as much, required 60,000 U. S. troops to quell.

In the speech of last week this father of the unborn Philippine republic sharply rebuked the politicians for antagonizing "my good friend, General Wood."

"I will certify," said he, "that Gov. Wood is neither against independence nor against those who loyally work for the people's aspirations. . . .

"We differ with him only as to time, which is a detail. He believes the foundation for independence is insufficiently strong and he is trying to strengthen it, although at times we do not agree with the methods he follows, which he sincerely believes to be best for us.

"I am convinced that if he were given men who, while remaining loyal to the national cause, were at the same time in his confidence, we would see our country governed by Filipinos and himself exercising only an advisory power to check possible abuses."

Such tribute put to scorn newspaper gossip, which interpreted President Coolidge's action in appointing Carmi A. Thompson (TIME, April 12) to investigate the Islands as a thrust at the General.

The significance of Mr. Thompson's appointment is not in Manila, but in Washington. For the Philippine question has totally changed in the quarter century.

In 1898, practically nobody wanted to hold the Philippines except as a grandiose assumption of -- "the white man's burden." Now, wise business interests see in the Philippines great prospect of national wealth. Rubber perhaps will grow there. Not only so, but 50 or 100 years hence the U. S. may need to import food, and food can be abundantly produced in the Philippines. Vast hills of minerals are also reputed to be lying there untouched. In short, the Philippine question is no longer purely academic.

It is for the U. S. people to decide whether they wish to keep the Philippines for selfish reasons. On this question the great proconsul at Manila expresses no opinion. He proceeds with his -the betterment of the Islands and the Islanders, socially, economically. He does it quietly without forced marches or strained rhetoric. Fit for independence or fit for exploitation -- the General scrupulously keeps to his job of making the Islands fit.*

* Leonard Wood's ancestry is unique. He is descended from four of the 22 heads of family that arrived on the Mayflower, from the first child born at Plymouth. Fifty ancestors fought in colonial wars, and many in every war won by the Stars and Stripes.

Born in 1860, in a Massachusetts sea coast village, Leonard's first ambitions were nautical. He was graduated from Harvard an M.D. The rules of the hospital to which he was attached provided that no interne could perform an operation. One day the ambulance brought in an injured child. Wood operated to save life, saved it, was fired. So he went into the Army, was sent out west, applied for a regular fighting job, got it, chased Geronimo, last of the Indian fighters, shared with General Lawton full credit for his capture.

In Cuba, 'which he reached as Colonel of Rough Riders, General Wood was officially responsible for elimination of yellow fever. Even more to his credit, he taught the Cubans two entirely new ways of life -- sanitation, self-government. Typical of the esteem of his subjects was the occasion when he, a Puritan, was invited to assist at the elevation of a Cuban archbishop.