A POLITICAL COACH

Murray was the man who taught me my first lessons in practical politics!" he exclaimed. "He ought to know better than to be in such business."

He gave the resolution the drubbing it deserved, and forced the fighting until the organization had crawled through a small hole, and gladly, in its anxiety to retreat; but he never punished Murray personally, always preferring to believe that the poor fellow was misguided rather than vicious. The fact that Murray had given him his first coaching when he was thrown, a greenhorn, among old hands practised at the game, had bound the two men together not merely for the time or for a few months or years thereafter, but virtually for life. This limitless gratitude is undoubtedly a weakness on Mr. Roosevelt's part, but an amiable weakness, which shows his extremely human side. One of his first thoughts as President was to find a place in the Federal service where Murray would fit, and put him into it. The position that offered itself in due season, and was promptly filled, was the deputy commissionership of immigration at Ellis Island.

Another of his helpers in time of need who is now reaping the reward of their lucky con

tact is General Leonard Wood, the military governor of the Moro country in the Philippines. Close as their companionship has since become, the two men did not know each other till the winter of 1897-98, a few months before the outbreak of the war with Spain. It had always been a fond dream of Roosevelt's to take part in a war. He had come upon the stage too late for the great struggle for the Union, but his assurance that Spain would one day have to be forced out of Cuba seemed on the verge of fulfilment about the time he met Wood, in whom he found a man of kindred faith and aspirations. They were nearly of an age, and both fond of hardy sports. Wood, though only an army surgeon, had enjoyed a military training in the field, which Roosevelt had not. Circumstances, moreover, had once placed Wood in command of troops-an extraordinary accident for a medical staff-officer-in the midst of an Indian campaign, and he had acquitted himself with credit. Anticipating a war in Cuba, he had visited the island and looked over some of the ground which it was supposed would be the site of active hostilities. All these things gave his companionship an added interest to Roosevelt, who, when President McKinley of

MAKING THE SOLDIER

fered him the command of a regiment, at once consented to take its lieutenant-colonelcy if the President would make Wood its colonel.

This looks, at a first glance, more like Roosevelt helping Wood than Wood helping Roosevelt; but such an assumption leaves out of view the fact that Roosevelt, eager to be at the front but conscious of his own ignorance of practical military affairs, needed most of all a teacher, and that Wood was competent to teach him just what he would require to know. The idea of the Rough Rider regiment was Roosevelt's own. For years he had cherished the thought, as he watched the bold equestrianism of the cowboys in the West and the fox-hunters and poloplayers in the East, that here was the finest material in the whole country from which to recruit a cavalry contingent in case of war. It was Roosevelt's name which attracted enlistments everywhere; Wood's was almost or quite unknown. Wood had hardly put Roosevelt through his first paces in drill and field tactics, in the routine duties of command, and in the care of his men, when an accident placed Wood in charge of their brigade and raised Roosevelt to the head of the regiment. Here the future President's nominal rank corresponded for the

first time with his actual prestige and authority, and he laid the foundation for the military element which entered so largely into his political campaigning a few months later.

Wood's advancement from a captain's grade in the army medical service to a full majorgeneralcy in five years is perhaps the most remarkable recorded in our day. It places him where practically nothing can prevent his attaining the supreme place in his profession while he is still a comparatively young man. For his latest rise he has to thank President Roosevelt, who never has forgotten the helping hand held out in 1898.

General S. B. M. Young also belongs in the list of useful friends. He and Roosevelt became acquainted in the West a good while before Wood came into view. Roosevelt was particularly attracted to him by his soldierly qualities. Not long before war was declared with Spain, at a luncheon in Washington where these three were present, the conversation turned upon the outlook, and Roosevelt and Wood told Young that they were laying their plans to get into the war if one came. "Then I will try to have you attached to my command, if I have one," said Young, "and I'll give you a chance