geofflambert
Posts: 14863
Joined: 12/23/2010 From: St. Louis Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MakeeLearn quote:
ORIGINAL: geofflambert I just read this and it cracked me up. If you don’t know anything about William Howard Taft just do a google image search and you’ll understand. This is from Barbara Tuchman’s “The Proud Tower”. Anxious to end the war [Spanish/Filipino/American War] and placate the “new-caught sullen peoples” and govern creditably, the Administration sent various committees to investigate the atrocities [committed by US troops], to find out what the Filipinos really wanted – short of self-government, which they said they wanted – and to report on what form of civil government to give them. In April, 1900, the shy, kindly, three-hundred-pound Judge William Howard Taft was sent out to set up a civil government, armed with a charter drawn up by the new Secretary of War, Elihu Root, which granted the Filipinos a liberal degree of internal autonomy. Since neither they nor the Americans were ready to give up fighting, the attempt was premature, but Taft stayed on, determined to govern in the interest of “the little brown brother” as soon as he was given a chance. When friends at home, concerned for his welfare, sent anxious queries about his health, he cabled Elihu Root that he had been out horseback riding and was feeling fine. “How is the horse feeling?” Root cabled back. was he sure it was a horse Thank you very much, I told a friend about that passage and just now told him what you posted and he cracked up.
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