A few days later Wood had returned to Funston and begun preparations for the training of the 10th Division, when by executive action the Governor of Kansas acknowledged on his own behalf and on behalf of the State the General's services to his country by making him a "citizen extraordinary" of the State.
The story of the Tenth Division is short but illuminating. It was composed principally of drafted men. Its first groups began to organize at Funston on the 10th of August--raw men from office, farm and shop. They found there the skeletons of so-called regular regiments--regiments which were regular only in name; that is to {250} say, there were only a very few regular officers of experience and a limited number of men recently recruited under the old system. On the 24th General Wood reviewed the whole division. On November 1st it was ready, trained, equipped and in condition both from the physical and the military point of view to go abroad. And when the armistice was signed on November 11th an advance contingent had already gone to France to prepare for its reception. About the middle of September the British and French Senior Mission--three officers of each army--reported at Funston and remained there for six weeks. And upon their departure on November 1st after a long, rigid and critical examination of the division they stated that in their opinion it was by far the best prepared and trained division that they had seen in this country.
Here again appears the same quality that made McKinley appoint Wood Governor-General of Cuba; that made Roosevelt send him to organize the apparently unorganizable part of the Philippine Islands; that caused the French to award him a very high order of the Legion of Honor; {251} that made the State of Kansas take him into its family as a citizen; that led the generals of Europe to hope he would come and be one of them; and finally that caused many hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen to follow him and support him in his plans to prepare the people of his nation for what eventually came upon them.
With the signing of the armistice and the victorious ending of the war Wood's activities did not cease. With characteristic energy he began the work of looking out for the soldiers who would soon be demobilized from the army and thrown upon their own resources. He saw how changed the outlook of many of these men would be. He saw the troubles in which thousands--actually millions--of them would be involved, not through any fault of their own, not through any fault of the Government or of army life, but because they had undergone certain mental changes incident to training, to active service, and hence could not again return to the point they had reached when their military service began.
He, therefore, instituted in Chicago, where as Commander of the Central Department he had his {252} headquarters, as well as in St. Louis, Kansas City and Cleveland, organizations to look to the finding of employment for returning officers and men. And in addresses and all methods open to him he urged the organization of similar bodies in all cities to accomplish elsewhere the same object. His attitude was that of the father of children--the rearrangement on new lines of the American family; and he again found universal support.
"Appreciation of the work done by our Soldiers, Sailors and Marines in the Great War can best be shown by active measures to return them to suitable civil employment upon their discharge from service. The four million men inducted into the service, less the dead, are being returned to their homes. In seeing that they are returned to suitable civil employment, and by that I mean employment in which they will find contentment, we will find it at times difficult to deal with them. We must remember that many of these men, before going in for the great adventure, had never been far from home, had never seen the big things of life, had never had the opportunity of finding {253} themselves. During their service in the army they found out that all men were equal except as distinguished one from the other by such characteristics as physique, education and character. They discovered that men who are loyal, attentive to duty, always striving to do more than required, stood out among their fellows and were marked for promotion. Naturally many of them now see that their former employment will not give them the opportunities for advancement which they have come to prize, and for that reason they want a change. They want a kind of employment which offers opportunities for promotion. Many such men are fitted for forms of employment which offer this advantage, and they must be given the opportunity to try to make good in the lines of endeavor which they elect to follow. It is not charity to give these men the opportunities for which they strive. It is Justice. Others are not mentally equipped to take advantage of such opportunities if offered, and with these we will find it more difficult to deal. They must be reasoned with and directed, if possible, into the kind of employment best suited to their characteristics. Let us {254} remember that a square deal for our honorably discharged Soldiers, Sailors and Marines will strengthen the morale of the Nation and will help to create a sound national consciousness ready to act promptly in support of Truth, Justice and Right" [Footnote: Address of Leonard Wood.]
There is, with the differences patent because of time and place and surrounding circumstances, a flavor to this plea that recalls another address upon a similar subject more than fifty years ago:
"It is for the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." [Footnote: Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech.]
{255}