I reported this to Mr. Taft and urged him to display a little more enthusiasm on his own account, but in reply I got a good-natured reminder that there was “plenty of time,” together with an analysis of the public feeling which, he decided, was not running in his favour at all. He wrote to Mr. Roosevelt:
Mrs. Taft writes me that you are disposed to lecture me for not being more cordial in cooperation with some of my … friends who want to organise a campaign for me for the presidential nomination. I told them just exactly what the fact was and nothing more, and I don’t find myself equal to becoming part of any organisation of that sort. The truth is in … and some of the other States, if a man does not join in a way as to imply a kind of obligation to look after these people, should success follow, there is no particular enthusiasm in his favour, and in my state of indifference about it the organisation is not likely to follow me.
Mrs. Taft said that you said you might have to support Hughes for the presidency. If you do you may be sure that you will awaken no feeling of disappointment on my part. While I very much appreciate your anxiety that I shall be nominated, and regard it as the highest compliment possible to me, and as a most gratifying evidence of your good will, you know what my feeling has been in respect to the presidency, and can understand that it will not leave the slightest trace of disappointment should you change your views and think it wise to make a start in any other direction.
In Mr. Roosevelt’s reply to Mr. Taft, he said I had misunderstood him, that what he had said was that Mr. Taft must not be too entirely aloof because if he were it might dishearten his supporters and put all Republicans in such shape that some man like Governor Hughes, or more probably some man from the West, would turn up with so much popular sentiment behind him that there would be no course open but to support him.
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 of The Outlook that he ought to print it in extenso and call attention to it. He will apply to you directly for it and I hope you will let him have it.
I am going to start Saturday afternoon to be away for a week, and if you see any gaping lids about my Department in the meantime, please sit on them gently.
“Sitting on the lid” was not in any sense the stationary and reposeful performance the expression seems to suggest. Before Mr. Taft returned to Washington from a tour of inspection of brigade posts, which followed immediately upon his trip to Idaho, Mr. Roosevelt had gone to Panama, leaving behind him various questions, including the one which resulted from the discharge without honour of the three companies of coloured troops at Brownsville, Texas, for the Secretary of War to keep within bounds until his return. Then there were many matters of a purely executive nature which, as long as they did not require the signature of the President himself, Mr. Taft was authorised and expected to dispose of. And with the Secretary of State also absent, his office became government headquarters, practically, where foreign Ambassadors, Senators and officials of other Departments had to take their chances of an interview along with visitors or representatives from the Philippines, Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Alaska and the Canal Zone, and with Army officers and War Department clerks.
I finally gave up all idea of ever getting him home
