RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
About this time there appeared in the New York Sun an editorial which pleased me and which expressed the rush of our lives with singular vividness. It said in part:
Merely to record the movements and missions of the Secretary of War requires a nimble mind. He journeys from Washington to Manila to reassure ten millions of natives restive under an experimental scheme of civil government and turns up in Panama to speed the digging of the Isthmian Canal. To give a fillip to a campaign for reform in some western State, or direct the southern Republicans in the way they should go, or enlighten the people Down East as to the President's home policy, or illuminate the recesses of a problem in jurisdiction for the benefit of a bar association, is only a matter of grabbing a time table and throwing a change of clothing into a travelling bag. Such are mere relaxations and holiday jaunts for the Hon. William H. Taft.
A Cuban revolution would be a poser to most statesmen, and to an ordinary Secretary of War a labour of Hercules; but to the business of bringing peace with honour to a distracted land, deposing one government and setting up another, meanwhile gratifying everybody and winning the esteem of the fiercest warrior, Mr. Taft devotes only one page of the Calendar and takes ship for the States to resume his routine duties as if he had done nothing out of the common.
But routine duties in Washington do not hold him long. An itinerary is made up for him and he plunges into the stress and turmoil of a political campaign. He is to make speeches in Ohio and Illinois, and Idaho claims him too. From Havana to Pocatello is something of a change and a far cry, but it is all in the day's work for William H. Taft…all nice problems look alike to the Secretary of War who should be called the Secretary of Peace, so uniform is his success in smoothing the wrinkled front of conflict and making two laughs echo where one groan was heard before.
No emergency, no exigency can put the Hon. William H. Tait down. With a heart for any fate, buoyant as hope, versatile as the kaleidoscope, indefatigable as fate and indomitable as victory, he is a most amazing and effective Secretary of War. "Cabinet help" when William H. Taft is the instrument and medium, is tantamount to the energy and force of a whole Administration. Yet there are those who would circumscribe his activities by investing him with the robes and immobile dignity of judicial office.
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