Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

Robert was not nearly as ill as we expected he would be and in a few weeks I was able to make definite plans for joining my husband. My sister, Mrs. Anderson, was going to Paris so I took advantage of the opportunity to enjoy her companionship on the voyage and sailed with her on the fourth of June, landing in France and going by train to Rome.

That the record of our ill-luck may be quite complete I must add that on the way across the Atlantic my son Charlie managed to pick up whooping-cough, and that by the time we reached Rome he had passed it on to Helen. Her first remark to her father was a plaintive query: “Papa, why is it we can never go anywhere without catching something?”

I devoutly hoped that we had caught everything there was to catch and that we might now venture to predict a period of peace.

I found my party very comfortably bestowed. They were occupying a whole floor at the Quirinal, the largest hotel then open in the city, and were keeping what appeared to me to be considerable “state.” It looked as if they had the entire building to themselves, but that was because it was midsummer when few tourists visit Rome and when all Roman society is supposed to flock to its mountain homes and to northern resorts. However, midsummer though it was, a good many members of the “Black,” or Vatican division of society, still lingered in the city and I found them evincing every desire to make our stay both pleasant and memorable. Before I arrived Mr. Taft had already “met, called upon, taken tea with and dined with Cardinals, Princes, counts, marquises, and distinguished Englishmen and Americans resident in Rome,” to quote from one of his own letters, but he had a good many things to do over again in my honour. He had also had an audience with Pope Leo XIII, and was deep in the rather distracting uncertainties and intricacies of his negotiations.

He did not have the pleasure of seeing the King of Italy whom he had a great desire to meet, because, even though the American Ambassador had made all the arrangements, etiquette did not permit such an audience until his relations with the Vatican had terminated, and by that time the King had gone to the military manœuvres in North Italy.

My husband’s position was one of very great delicacy. By the nature of our national institutions it is not possible for us to send a representative to the Vatican in a diplomatic capacity no matter what the emergency may be, and Mr. Roosevelt in sending this Commission to Rome had no intention that its office should be construed into a formal recognition of the Vatican, which could not fail to raise a storm of protest and opposition in this country. So the instructions given to Mr. Taft by Secretary Root were made very definite on this point. After reviewing the necessity for taking such action on the part of our government and covering the favourable reports on the proposed negotiations submitted by the Philippine Committees of the House and Senate, the instructions began with paragraph one:

One of the controlling principles of our government is the complete separation of church and state, with the entire freedom of each from any control or interference by the other. This principle is imperative wherever American jurisdiction extends, and no modification or shading thereof can be a subject of discussion.

Following this in numbered paragraphs, a tentative plan for the adjustment of the Friar difficulties is outlined and the instructions end with paragraph nine:

Your errand will not be in any sense or degree diplomatic in its nature, but will be purely a business matter of negotiation by you as Governor of the Philippines for the purchase of property from the owners thereof, and the settlement of land titles in such a manner as to contribute to the best interests of the people of the Islands.

These instructions were easier to receive than to carry out, since from the beginning the Vatican made every possible effort to give the mission a diplomatic aspect and to cast upon it the glamour of great official solemnity, and Mr. Taft had constantly to keep his mind alert to the danger of accidental acquiescence in a misinterpretation of his position. To take a position which would soothe the feelings of American Catholics and yet not shock the conscience of any Protestant was something like being ground between the proverbial millstones. However, Cardinal Rampolla very graciously met the business-like ideas of the Commission and arranged a private audience with Pope Leo at which the propositions of the Philippine government were to be outlined to him.