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Show ' f WESTERN MEN NEEDED BOTH political parties are at sea casting about for an available man for president, especially since the, death of Roosevelt. t As an aftermath of the war there has been a great deal of talk about I taking up a man of military experi ence fpr the position. Colonel Loenard Wood is a national figure who Is occupying a constantly larger place in the hearts and minds of the American people. - As governor general of Porto Rico and Cuba and in charge of the sanitary sani-tary reconstruction of the Philippines he got administrative training. He was not only a military hero at Santiago, "but cleaned up the city of Havana and stamped out the last vestiges ves-tiges of the yellow fever there. He was one of a small party with Captain Lawton who went into Mexico 'and won a medal from congress as (the fighting surgeon who took Geron-imo. Geron-imo. He organized the civilian training camp at Plattsburg and led in the .fight for national preparedness that ended in the victory over Germany. He went over to France and made an Independent report on conditions on the western military front that forced congress to act. Ho was summoned three timo3 before be-fore the senate committee on military affairs and exposed inefficiency that compelled- speeding up war. A New Englander by birth, he Is a man. of action with a true westerner's jk scope of vision and capacity fjr initiative init-iative when Initiative is necessary. When he was first sent to Camp Funston he found it an undralned bog and ordered all the picks and shovels in Kansas City and cleaned it up. Ho found men without blankets and ordered 30,000 pairs at his own risk, sent the bill to Washington and it was paid without cereipony. Colonel Wood has a way of cutting right through red tape and disentangling disentang-ling ambiguous officialism with a clear grasp of common sense that gets T V'result8, At Camp Funston he was first to introduce in-troduce trade schoolp for enlisted men to prepare them for taking full part in reconstruction. His work at Plattsburg was adopted as basis for hundreds of civilian camps, ao his work at Camp Funston is followed at other camps. The' west can probably not name the next president, but It will take kindly to Wood's western way of doing do-ing things and thinking them. The only man in the present admin istration who takes western views is Secretary Lane of the department of the interior born in Canada. The west takes up nearly everything every-thing that Secretary Lane proposes, and westerners generally regret that he is barred from being a candidate. The western viewpoint is all-important when it is considered how for ten years we have been hog-tied and handicapped han-dicapped by eastern policies. Unless there is some weakness in his armor of equipment for public service ser-vice and political availability unknown to the press, Colonel Wood would do. The U. S. senators took his reports on weaknesses found in the army establishment es-tablishment because he had the courage cour-age to tell the truth. He was the apostle of preparedness for two years before there was any preparation to fit our coutnry to defend de-fend itself, and he was right. He was first to tell the senate committee com-mittee on military affairs that we must put an army of 4,000,000 men in the field, and he was rjght. He was first to demand that the armies at home be given vocational training to fit them to take up the work of civil life, and he was right. Industrial News Bureau. 4 J |