It sounds so simple that one wonders why it is written. And yet for the last two years under the guise of war necessity this country has been moving in quite another direction. Instead of personal responsibility we have been substituting more and more government responsibility. Instead of individual effort we have been advancing governmental {272} effort. Instead of natural competition we have been substituting government regulation. Instead of advancing patriotism, nationalism, Americanism, we have been letting all these give way to internationalism. We have not been preparing ourselves as individuals to assume individual responsibly, but in fact we have been giving up that responsibility to government. It is through the sense of the people quickened by such men as Wood that we shall come back to sounder methods--not to where we were before. That can never be. If it were so, the world would not be moving forward. But we shall come back to the basic principle that individual initiative, energy and the rewards that accrue therefrom are and always must be the basis for collective initiative, energy and the rewards thereof; that no collective organization such as a government can remain virile and effective unless its component parts--the individuals--remain virile and effective. The appeal which Wood's life makes to us is toward this responsibility of the individual _for_ his own work, his own affairs, his own family, and {273} to his own country, and that has been found throughout history to be the groundwork, the foundation upon which civilization rests. Translated into current phrase this means that we must follow such men as he, keep eternally at work to improve ourselves individually, to make a good and honest living, to hand on the torch of patriotism, of sanity and of ever-increasing knowledge by furnishing to the world the new generations that shall carry on, and to weld and stabilize the whole structure by building up Americanism within our borders. In the vocabulary of General Wood this is translated again into the words: "Prepare! Prepare! Prepare!" Such has been the career of the New Englander from Cape Cod who has worked in his own land, in the tropics, in many spheres, at many problems until at the age of fifty-eight in sound mind and body he stands firmly still in the prime of life ready for many years yet to come of service and work for himself, his family and his fellow countrymen. End of Project Gutenberg's The Career of Leonard Wood, by Joseph Hamblen Sears