Letter to Leonard Wood from General Enoch H. Crowder - July 20, 1918

Transcript

July 20, 1918. Personal Major General Leonard Wood, Camp Funston, Kansas. My dear General Wood: it is a habit with me, of long standing, not to underestimate any situation that has to be dealt with and I have long since ceased to be optimistic about anything. The word optimism does not, in my judgment, describe any quality of any military value to the country; and no more does pessimism. I can understand how great efficiency can come out of anxiety, which is a word I like better; and, just as I have attempted to see the facts as they are within my jurisdiction, so too have I attempted to see the Military situation with which we are confronted just as it exists. There is some reason why, in the fourth year of the war, we are fighting battles and not winning them. There is some reason why Germany, in the fourth year of the war, is fighting battles on Foreign soil and not losing them. I think I know that reason, but it would do no good to comment upon it. But my primary purpose in writing this letter was not alone to acknowledge your letter of July 16, but to say to you that the Wabbling that has taken place in the matter of physical requirements and the medical examination is in no regard attributable to this office. The Surgeon General has the responsibility for the record made in that regard and he has changed the requirements almost from day to day, with the result that men are examined at home with one set of regulations and upon arrival at Camp examined under another set. The sudden change in the regulations respecting the height of soldiers is an instance which will probably lead to 50,000 men being sent back from Camp of the June call, unless a hurry-up telegram which I urged the Chief of Staff to send yesterday reaches the Camps, with its admonition and notice of a third change, in time to save this deplorable result. If I come West I shall visit your Camp. I have not yet been out to see any of my men except at the nearby camps of Upton and Meade, for the reason that I have never felt that I could surrender direct personal control of this situation- there are too many chances for it to go to pieces. Very truly yours, EHC-vbr