Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

“Then, I shall have to go,” said Monsignor Guidi.

“I am very sorry,” said Mr. Taft. “I understand your position perfectly and I trust you understand mine as well.”

So the highest of insular Church dignitaries got his hat and hastened away while the “renegade and impious impostor” remained—in serene unconsciousness of the disturbance he had created? Perhaps not. At least he was serene.

But our relations with Monsignor Guidi continued most agreeable during our entire stay in the Islands. Mr. Taft thought very highly of him as a man and an ecclesiastical statesman and diplomat and greatly regretted his death which occurred after we left the Islands. Through him, the question of the Friars’ lands was settled as Pope Leo had told Mr. Taft it would be, satisfactorily to the United States. To bring that story, which was distractingly long drawn out in reality, to a close, I will merely add that the government succeeded in purchasing the Friars’ lands for the sum of $7,000,000; they were turned into a public domain to be sold under most encouraging conditions, to their tenants and others who wished to acquire homesteads. The Friars were not sent back to the parishes and many left the Islands.

However this was not brought about without the protracted exercise of patience and diplomacy in the very midst of which the long arm of Washington reached out and touched my busy husband on the shoulder. He came home one day with a puzzled air and a cablegram from President Roosevelt. This cablegram read, in part:

Taft, Manila. On January first there will be a vacancy on the Supreme Court to which I earnestly desire to appoint you.... I feel that your duty is on the Court unless you have decided not to adopt a judicial career. I greatly hope you will accept. Would appreciate early answer.

Roosevelt.

This came before I had been in the Islands a month and when Mr. Taft was so deep in the complications of his work that he was almost a stranger to his friends.

There was an accompanying cablegram from Secretary Root strongly urging acceptance on the score of my husband’s impaired health. Mr. Root declared that he was most unwilling to lose his services in the Philippines, but thought it better for him “not to take any serious risk of breaking down and having to leave the Islands an invalid even after a considerable period of further service.” As Mr. Taft was feeling particularly well and was taking daily exercise and keeping himself in excellent condition this sounded rather like anticipating a very unlikely calamity, but the last time Mr. Root had seen him he was anything but robust so it was easy to understand the Secretary’s friendly concern for him.

What to do? This was not a question which gave Mr. Taft even a shade of hesitation, because he knew immediately what he must do. All his life his first ambition had been to attain the Supreme Bench. To him it meant the crown of the highest career that a man can seek, and he wanted it as strongly as a man can ever want anything. But now that the opportunity had come acceptance was not to be thought of. I had always been opposed to a judicial career for him, but at this point I shall have to admit I weakened just a little. I remembered the year of illness and anxiety we had just been through; and sometimes I yearned to be safe in Washington even though it did mean our settlement in the “fixed groove” that I had talked against for so long.