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139 16 The Buildup Starts The sinking of the Lusitania came as less of a surprise to Wood than to most Americans, because, unlike his countrymen, he had long been convinced that war was coming. Nevertheless, it did not change his status. Roosevelt, on the other hand, was aroused, so much so that he resurrected his dream of raising a volunteer division, as he had back in 1911. He saw himself commanding an enlarged version of the Rough Riders of nearly twenty years earlier.1 No such epiphany seems to have struck Wood. The Lusitania tragedy did, however, encourage the proponents of preparedness , and for once the issue was not in the realm of partisan politics. Colonel Edward House, Secretary of War Lindley Garrison, and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt were Democrats; Senator Elihu Root, Henry Stimson, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge were Republicans, all working together. True, many Republicans tended to interpret Woodrow Wilson’s reluctance as unpatriotic, and to ward off this tendency Secretary Garrison had seen fit to warn his political opponents openly against that. But as of May 1915, that danger had temporarily disappeared, and President Wilson was beginning to see the sway of public opinion and was becoming a bit less cautious. The Preparedness Movement was well financed and prestigious. Ironically , however, their cause of advocating an increase in Army strength was damaged, not aided, by the fact that war was raging in Europe. Armies cost money, and at that time, in the absence of a federal income tax, government 1. John Patrick Finnegan, Against the Specter of a Dragon: The Campaign for American Military Preparedness, 1914–1917, 38. 140 Teddy Roosevelt and Leonard Wood revenue came from the tariff. With European commerce curtailed by the British naval blockade of Germany and Germany’s U–boat menace, tariff rates had to go up. —————————————————— Most of these considerations fell outside of Leonard Wood’s purview. The idea of restricting his activities to military affairs, however, had never been one of his outstanding traits. In the year after returning to Governors Island, he made an estimated sixty speeches preaching his gospel of military preparedness , even though he was skirting the line of propriety. A congressman once described him as “the most aggressive and most persistent officer who was ever Chief of Staff, in my memory. . . . Whatever may be his merits or demerits, he was a man who had the courage of his convictions and who never lost an opportunity in expressing those views.”2 The congressman’s views were widely shared by those who came in contact with Leonard Wood. One of Wood’s critics was Secretary of War Lindley Garrison, not his direct boss. In advocating military preparedness, they were allies, but they indulged in a mutual dislike. This contrasted dramatically with the friendship Wood had enjoyed with Secretary Henry Stimson, whose admiration for him had been unbounded. The fact is they were rivals. Garrison was an authoritarian who wanted all relations between the Army and the public to be handled by his own office. Wood, however, spoke to audiences with authority, not in the name of Garrison. This state of affairs did not, however, materially affect their mutual dedication to the cause of preparedness. Wood possessed one distinct advantage in his rivalry with Garrison: his responsibilities in the Eastern Department were sufficiently limited that he had time to concentrate on one issue, preaching preparedness. He sought and attained allies, and he got them in men outside of government. One of these was a wealthy, well–connected young lawyer named Grenville Clark, a Harvard graduate and a member of Elihu Root’s law firm. Clark assisted Wood in drawing members of the university elite into service. He and Wood were convinced that the priority lay in developing an officer corps and that a major source of officers should be the graduates of America’s universities. To that end, Clark founded the Committee of One Hundred, consisting of Ivy League graduates, who met periodically to make plans at the Harvard Club of New York. He set up an official headquarters on Wall Street and sent out fifteen thousand invitations to the right people, inviting them to join in Wood’s growing number of summer encampments. Roosevelt’s second son, Archibald, commonly known as Archie, was one of those who accepted. 2. Representative Swagart Shirley, quoted in ibid., 57. The Buildup Starts 141 In the summer of 1915, Wood picked up another idea, this one reportedly...

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