he would not do so I do not know. He was an
exceedingly modest man and shrank from all controversy. It is
seldom, however, that the State Department has had at its head so
brilliant and scholarly a man as John Hay. He will go down in
history as among the greatest of our Secretaries of State.

I will make some further references to the important results of
the Roosevelt Administration in what I shall say in a later chapter
concerning the work of the Committee on Foreign Relations.

William Howard Taft, now President of the United States, was
President Roosevelt's Secretary of War, and a very able Secretary
he was. I first knew him in Washington when, as a young man but
thirty-three years of age, he was serving as Solicitor General
under President Harrison. I followed his career very closely from
the time that I first became acquainted with him.

As a United States Circuit Judge, to which position he was appointed
by President Harrison, he was regarded as one of the ablest in the
country. The Circuit Court of Appeals on which he served was a
notable one. It was composed of three men who have since occupied
the highest positions in the United States. William R. Day was
first Assistant Secretary of State, then Secretary of State, one
of the negotiators of the Paris Peace Treaty, Circuit Judge, and
later a Supreme Court Justice. Judge Taft was first civil Governor
of the Philippines, Secretary of War, and then President; and he
has only recently appointed his old colleague, Judge Lurton, the
third member of the Court of Appeals, to the position of Justice
of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Judge Taft has occupied many high positions, all of which he has
filled with great honor and distinction. I doubt whether he has
enjoyed the high office of President of the United States. I myself
have always thought that he would have made one of our greatest
Chief Justices had he been appointed to that position.

Just before the National Convention of 1908 assembled at Chicago,
in which convention I was chairman of the Illinois delegation, when
every one knew that Taft was sure to be the nominee, I called on
him at the War Department, and in the course of the conversation
I took occasion to remark that I had always been in favor of him
for Chief Justice, but it seemed now that he was certain to be the
nominee for President, and his career would consequently go along
another line. He replied: "If your friend C