Topic 56
 PERSHING AND WOOD

ONE thing which annoyed Colonel Roosevelt was the public's persistence in believing that it was to him that General Leonard Wood owed his big jump in the army; in a word, to its confounding the case of Wood with that of Pershing.

"The man they are thinking of," he used to say, "is Pershing.  It was he I jumped over the heads of several hundred other army officers.  I’d do it again, by thunder, if the same occasion arose! Wood got his big jump from McKinley, and all I ever gave him were the promotions due him in the usual course of seniority.  I've tried a hundred times to straighten this out in the public mind, but I don't suppose I'll ever succeed.  The public seems to wish to believe this myth.

"President McKinley gave Wood his big jump in the regular establishment, after he took him out of the Rough Riders.  I gave Pershing his big jump long after I had succeeded Mr.  McKinley in the White House.

"It came about in this way: Pershing was doing brilliant work in the Philippines.  All the official reports showed him a man of energy and initiative, who could be depended upon to do what he was sent to do, and about whom you did not have to worry.  The unofficial reports that came back squared with all this.  Both left no room for doubt as to the calibre and quality of the man.

"Now about this time the line of promotion in the army became clogged.  It needed new colonels and lieutenant colonels, but the law would not permit the appointment of men immediately below these ranks that were of the quality needed.  Congress would not change the law.

"I had, however, the right to appoint brigadier generals.  I made Pershing one.  Therefore, you might say that Congress, by refusing me the right to make him a colonel or lieutenant colonel, forced me to elevate him even higher.

"Pershing at this time had one handicap.  It was in the person of his esteemed father-in-law, Senator Warren of Wyoming, Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs.  To advance Pershing above his elders meant an invitation to charges of favoritism, or, as the army and navy sometimes put it,' the three p's — politics, petticoats, and a pull.' Not to advance him for this reason would have been cowardly and unfair.  There was nothing for me to do but name him and let the heathen rage.

"After I had done so, Warren came to me and thanked me.  "I said to him: 'Senator, I am very fond of you, but this appointment has not been made on your account.  You owe me no thanks for it.  I am promoting Captain Pershing, not because he is your son-in-law, but in spite of the row that relationship will stir up.  You don't owe me a thing on account of it.'

"Warren did not seem to like this, but it was the truth and there was no reason why it should be sugar coated for him.  However" (this with a laugh), "he did not oppose the appointment.

"Time has proven that I was right.  Mr.  Wilson has proved it by his selection of Pershing, first for Mexico, and now to command the armies in France.  Sims, of the navy, another man I was accused of favoring, Mr.  Wilson has also chosen for important work, fairly good proof that my judgment of these men when they were juniors was sound."

"But he has not approved of Wood," I suggested.

"No, he has not.  He has used Wood very badly and very unfairly.  I might say he has also been very foolish in the way he has handled Wood.  If he wanted to side track him, he could have done it by sending him to Hawaii or the Philippines and leaving him there.  But he did not have the courage to do this; he adopted halfway measures, and as a result, Wood has been like a sore thumb to him — always in the way, and doing things so well that the public won't allow Mr.  Wilson to forget him.

"Wood is a good soldier, and a splendid organizer.  So is Pershing.  Pershing, in addition, is something of a courtier.  Wood is not.  Wood has been plain and outspoken and he's suffered for it.

"Wood is a big man who can look on a problem from every angle.  He makes few mistakes, but he's big enough, when he makes one, to admit the error, and he always has patience with the other fellow's opinion.

" I am very fond of Wood, and I know he is of me, but in my years in the Presidency, Wood never took any advantage of our intimacy or in the slightest degree presumed on our friendship.  If anything, he leaned backward in this respect."