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.
Faithfully yours,
Elihu Root.
“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, Porto Rico, Alaska and the Canal Zone, and with Army officers and War Department clerks.