The great powers of Continental Europe were all unfriendly.

They jeered at our ships and men, and with fatuous partisanship insisted that the Spaniards would prove too much for our "mercenaries" because we were a commercial people of low ideals who could not fight, while the men whom we attempted to hire for that purpose were certain to run on the day of battle.
Among my friends was the then Army Surgeon Leonard Wood.

He was a surgeon.

Not having an income, he had to earn his own living.

He had gone through the Harvard Medical School, and had then joined the army in the Southwest as a contract doctor.