"I desire particularly to invite the attention of the Department Commander to Assistant Surgeon Leonard Wood, the only officer who has been with me through the whole campaign. His courage, energy and loyal support during the whole time; his encouraging example to the command when work was the hardest and prospects darkest; his thorough confidence and belief in the final successes of the expedition, and his untiring efforts to make {47} it so, have placed me under obligations so great that I cannot even express them." Through the formal language of a military report crops out the respect of a commanding officer who knew whereof he spoke, the acknowledgment that here was a young subordinate who never despaired, never gave up, who always did his part and more than his part, and who placed his commanding officer under obligations which he was unable "even to express." That was a great deal for any young man to secure. To-day, after the Great War, there are many such extracts from official reports and all are unquestionably deserved. But they are the result of a nation awakened to patriotism when all went in together. In 1886, when the nation was at peace, when commercial pursuits were calling all young men to make their fortune, young Leonard Wood answered a much less universal call to do his work in a fight that had none of the flare or glory of the front line trench in Flanders. Out of it all came to him at a very early age practice in handling men in rough country in rough times--men who were not puppets even {48} though they were regular army privates. They had to be handled at times with an iron hand, at times with the softest of gloves; and an officer to gain their confidence and respect had to show them that he could beat them at their own game and be one of them--and still command. The Congressional Medal of Honor awarded him years later for this Indian work is a fair return of what he accomplished, for this Medal of Honor, the then only prize for personal bravery and high fighting qualities which his country could give him, has always been the rare and much coveted award of army men. It was in Wood's case the mark of conspicuous fighting qualities, conspicuous bravery and marked attention to duty--a sign of success of a high order for a New England doctor of twenty-five. {49} THE OFFICIAL {50} {51} III THE OFFICIAL Chance no doubt at times plays an important part in the making of a man. Yet perhaps Cassias' remark, through the medium of Shakespeare, that "The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings," has the truer ring. Chance no doubt comes to all of us again and again, but it is the brain that takes the chance which deserves the credit and not the accidental event, opportunity or occasion offering.