RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
The 1905 campaign was a hotly contested one. The Republicans won in New York and Idaho, and generally, I believe, though I remember those two States especially, and I find Mr. Taft writing to Mr. Root from Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, on his way back from Boise City:
Dear Athos:
I saw a copy of your speech when I was in the "wilds" of Idaho, and I cannot tell you the comfort it gave me to read it, and how it intensified the affection and admiration I have always had for the speaker. I can just think of your making up your mind to say the thing and do the thing that the occasion demanded.…You selected the psychological moment, and I have no doubt that you did a great deal to prevent Hearst's election, and I do not doubt also that you are receiving the commendations of your grateful fellow citizens of New York, and all over the country, as you ought to, for hurling your spear full and fair at this "knight of evil."…
From everything I have seen in the west my judgment is that the President cannot avoid running again.…There is no real second choice where I have been. Of course there are complimentary allusions to others.…So far as you and I are concerned I think we are well out of it, and whatever may be our ambitions for honourable service, there is a compensation in not having to be exposed to the horrors of a campaign with this product of yellow journalism whom you have had so much satisfaction in sending down to defeat for a time.
Apropos of this victory, Mr. Roosevelt wrote to Mr. Taft:
Upon my word I do not know which to be the more proud of, what Root did in New York or what you did in Idaho.
When Mr. Taft got back to Washington he found the following letter from Mr. Root, which completes the triangle of this mutual admiration society of the Three Musketeers:
Dear Porthos:
I have been disappointed that your most important and admirable speech in Idaho has not been more freely published and commented on in the East. I have just suggested to the Editor of306
