And State Papers 83 



symbol of honor and good faith in the Philippine 

 Islands; to govern with justice, and with that firm 

 ness, that absence of weakness, which is only another 

 side of justice. He has gone back to do all of that 

 because it is his duty as he sees it. We are to be 

 congratulated, we Americans, that we have a fellow- 

 American like Taft. 



And now Elihu Root, who, unlike myself, Mr. 

 President Eliot, but like most of you present, comes 

 of the old New England stock, whose great-grand 

 father stood beside Leonard Wood's great-grand 

 father among the "embattled farmers" at Concord 

 Bridge; Elihu Root, who had worked his way up 

 from being a poor and unknown country boy in 

 New York, to the leadership of the bar of the great 

 city he gave it up, made the very great pecuniary 

 sacrifice implied in giving it up, and accepted the 

 position of Secretary of War, a position which, for 

 the last three years and at present amounts to being 

 not only the Secretary of War, but the Secretary 

 for the islands, the Secretary for the colonies at 

 the same time. He has done the most exhausting 

 and the most responsible work of any man in the 

 administration, more exhausting and more responsi 

 ble work than the work of the President, because 

 circumstances have been such that with a man of 

 Root's wonderful ability, wonderful industry and 

 wonderful conscientiousness, the President could not 

 help but devolve upon him work that made his task 

 one under which almost any other man would have 

 staggered. He has done all this absolutely, disin- 



