"Well, the youngsters began to swear by Wood, and the old chaps followed, so that from 'cussing him out' they began to respect him and then to admire and love him. That's the word--love. It's the easiest thing in the world to pick a fight out there now by saying something against Wood. It is always the same when men come in contact with him. I don't honestly believe there is a man in the department now who wouldn't go to hell and back for Leonard Wood." It was again much the same story as in Cuba. It was not only the personality of the man himself, his personal magnetism, but the quiet simplicity of his methods backed by knowledge and good judgment. It was the absence of doing anything for effect, anything of the personal {185} "ego;" the getting of things done quietly, without ferment or conversation. And back of it all the absolute certainty of every one who worked with or under him that Leonard Wood would do exactly what he said he would, even though he said it quite quietly only once and even though the doing of it meant a military expedition, a battle and the death of many a good man who perhaps knew nothing of the real reasons. Here again space is too limited to permit of an account of the work done by Wood which made a group of pirates into a relatively law-abiding community. Yet some attempt to picture the situation is necessary in order to give a slight idea of what the problem was. It should be borne in mind that the country over which he was made Governor-General consisted of two-thirds of the Island of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago--a long chain of large and small islands extending almost to Borneo. The inhabitants were principally Mohammedans, known to the Spaniards as Moros. Along the coast of Mindanao were scattered small Philippine settlements--Christian Filipinos. Widely {186} separated back in the islands were numerous tribes speaking different dialects. In appearance they were not unlike the Diacs of Borneo. Some of them were headhunters. Among some of them cannibalism still existed in the form of religious ceremonies. The Moros were the masters of all the seas in this vicinity. They were the old Malay pirates so well known in books of travel. The Spaniards had waged intermittent war against them since early in 1600, but they never effectively conquered them. They would send down a large expedition, win a victory and withdraw. This procedure, however, made little or no impression on the pirates, who shortly returned to their trade when the Spanish victors had returned home.