"One day about the middle of November the native _calentura_ or fever,
from which General Wood suffered greatly, sent him to his home, which
is on the edge of the town, earlier than usual. He had no sooner
reached the house than he was notified by telephone that a bloody riot
had occurred at San Luis, a town 20 miles out on the {121} Santiago
Railway. The fever was raging in the General, his temperature
exceeding 105, and he was so sick and dizzy that he staggered as he
walked. But with that indomitable will that had served him on many a
night raid against hostile Apaches, he entered his carriage and was
driven back to the city. He picked up his chief signal officer,
Captain J. E. Brady, at the Palace and hastened to the building
occupied by the telegraph department of the Signal Corps on Calle
Enramadas. Captain Brady took the key at the instrument.
"'Tell the operator to summon members of the rural guard who were
fired on, and the commanding officer of the Ninth Immunes,' ordered
the General, tersely. Thenceforward, for three hours General Wood sat
there, questioning, listening, issuing orders, all with a promptness
and certainty of judgment that would have been extraordinary in a man
quite at his ease; yet all the time, as he could not help showing in
mien and features, the raging fever was distressing to the point of
agony. Those about him could not but marvel at the man's resolution
and endurance. The {122} following day, although still racked with
fever, he went by special train to San Luis and investigated the
affair in person.'" [Footnote: _Fortnightly Review_.]
The basis of the great work, however, as General Wood has himself
repeatedly said in conversation and in print, was to effect all this
regeneration without causing the Cubans to look upon the American Army
and the American control as they had for years looked upon the Spanish
Army and the Spanish control. That his success here in the most
difficult phase of the whole prodigious enterprise was absolute has
been testified to in innumerable ways and instances.
Only one or two of these can be given here, but they are illuminating
in the extreme and they suggest the success of the methods of the man
who had been put in charge of this difficult work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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