Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

Before we left Manila his appointment had been announced and as we passed through Japan en route to Washington we were received with all the ceremony and official dignity that the Japanese naturally would consider proper to the entertainment of the War Minister of a great and friendly foreign power. This was experience number one.

It was just before the outbreak of hostilities between Russia and Japan, and General Kuropotkin, the Russian Minister of War, had very recently been in Tokyo and had been accorded a welcome so elaborate that it became historic. It satisfied the Japanese conception of courtesy to an exalted foreign visitor and we discovered that it was to serve as a model for our own reception, though our time was so short that the programme had to be considerably modified.

Had we remained with our ship to Yokohama there would have been no opportunity to entertain us at all, but a special train was sent to meet us at Nagasaki, the first port of call on the homeward voyage, and nearly the whole length of the Empire from Tokyo, and we were whisked through ahead of everything two or three days in advance of our ship, which had to make two more stops before proceeding to Yokohama.

We were the guests of the nation and were conducted from one function to another with the greatest honour and official formality. Among other arrangements made for our entertainment was a luncheon at the Palace with the Emperor and Empress, and Mr. Taft was permitted, in his capacity of a war secretary, to witness the evolutions of a crack Japanese regiment, of 3,000 troops ready for the field massed on a single great parade ground.

The Japanese Minister of War, General Terauchi, was a soldier—which seems fitting, and which is usual in most countries I believe—and he assumed at once, in common with all the other Army officers whom he encountered, that Mr. Taft was a soldier, too. This has nothing to do with my immediate story, but I remember it as one of the most amusing circumstances of that visit to Japan. Whatever Mr. Taft may be he is not martial, but these Japanese warriors proceeded to credit him with all manner of special knowledge which he had never had an opportunity to acquire and to speak to him in technical terms which, it must be admitted, strained his ability for concealing his ignorance. He finally said that if anybody asked him again about the muzzle velocity of a Krag-Jorgensen, or any like question, he intended to reply: “Sh! It’s a secret!”

General Kodama, who afterward made himself world-famous as Chief of Staff during the Russo-Japanese War, had been Military Governor of Formosa and he was especially interested in Mr. Taft because he conceived that in the Philippines we had a parallel for their Formosan problem. He grew quite confidential, telling Mr. Taft many things about the Japanese administration of Formosan affairs and drawing comparisons between his difficulties and those that we had encountered under similar circumstances. He ended by saying:

“We had to kill a good many thousands of those people before they would be good. But then, of course, you understand,—you know,—you know!”

This story could not have been told at that time because there were groups of active anti-Imperialists in the United States who would have pounced upon it as something to be made the most of as an argument for their cause, but in the light of history that has been made I think it is safe to tell it now. Mr. Taft had to admit that he was a man of peace, that so far as he personally was concerned he had never killed nor ordered killed a single Filipino in his life, and that his whole endeavour had been to form a friendly alliance with the Philippine people and to dissuade them from indulgence in the personal danger involved in their useless opposition to temporary American control.

We made something of a triumphal progress through Japan during our short stay and were escorted to our ship by numerous dignitaries who were extremely gracious and who cheered us on our way with such “banzais!” and such a waving of flags as made me feel that we were quite important personages. Later on I had my sense of the importance of my position rudely shaken. There is one thing to be said for the American Republic and that is that no public official is permitted to retain for very long a too exalted opinion of himself.

One day shortly after my arrival in Washington, I was at tea at the house of a friend and found myself in conversation with a lady, the wife of an Army officer, whom I had known in Manila. We talked around and about various subjects, after the manner of ladies at a tea, when she finally said to me: