Death Watch

Last week a death watch was taken up before a red brick house on Wyoming Avenue in Washington. Within lay William Howard Taft, 27th President of the U. S., tenth Chief Justice of the U. S. He was dying. For a week his physicians, hopeless of his recovery, waited for his passing at any hour. But against the inevitable end he made resolute resistance. His will-to-live was strong; his affected heart, weary from a lifetime of overwork, was feeble. As his life seemed to trickle away, citizens throughout the land held their breath in sorrowful anticipation of the end of a great man whom they had honored much and loved more.

When, in the fall of 1874, "Bill" Taft, aged 17, arrived from Cincinnati at New Haven to join 132 other youngsters in making up that year's freshman class, there was born within him a loyalty and devotion to Yale that grew stronger and deeper with the passing of each of his 72 years. He knew his whole class; his whole class knew him as the son of Alphonso Taft, '33, the brother of Charles, '64, and Peter, '67 Taft. In his sophomore year his father became, first, President Grant's Secretary of War and, next, his Attorney General. "Bill" Taft was president of the Freshman Boat Club, won a first prize with a sophomore composition, and helped pull the senior tug-of-war team to victory.

He was Phi Beta Kappa, the last man tapped for Skull & Bones, class orator at commencement, and No. 2 graduate in the class of '78 which afterwards boasted that it was "the noisiest class that ever graduated from Yale."

Thereafter his horizon increased with his bulk until an entire nation, rapidly becoming dominant in the world, was his arena. But rare was the June which did not find him on the Yale campus and it is through the eyes of the smaller world that the world-figure may be seen most sympathetically. Fondly, proudly, Yale followed his career.

At 33 he was Solicitor General of the U. S., at 44 Governor of the Philippines; at 47 Theodore Roosevelt, Harvard '80, who loved "Will" Taft well enough to let him snooze in the strenuous Rooseveltian presence, took him into his cabinet as Secretary of War, groomed him for the Presidency.

Taft's four years in the White House were not happy ones. Mrs. Taft was an invalid. He lost control of Congress at midterm. Roosevelt turned viciously upon him. But, withal, he kept his good humor, jested about going on a diet as he ate his customary White House breakfast of two oranges, a 12 oz. steak, creamy, sugary coffee, toast thick with butter.

"Like a rat in a corner," as he said himself, he was driven to seek and win the Republican nomination of 1912 over Roosevelt's opposition. Then followed the three-cornered contest between a Yale man, a Harvard man, and a Princeton man for the Presidency. Everybody loved "Bill" Taft but love does not always make votes. Taft was ignominiously defeated. Though Connecticut went for Woodrow Wilson in that election, Taft had the satisfaction of beating Roosevelt in the state.

Yale took him back with open arms. It made him Kent Professor of Law, supplied him with an enormous chair to hold his 340 Ibs. In the Taft Hotel, named for him, he had a special office, rent-free, because he was a public character. Then followed eight happy tranquil years of teaching. Taft's older son Robert had graduated from Yale (1910) when his father was in the White House. Charles, much like his father, in manner and mind, was the all-around man of the class of '18. He played basketball, football, was the most popular man in his class and graduated near the top of it. And presently "Bill" Taft began to add rooms to his summer home at Murray Bay to accommodate his grandchildren.

On the last Saturday night of the 1920 campaign Taft made a ringing speech in Woolsey Hall at New Haven in behalf of the Republican party and the election of Warren Gamaliel Harding. Less than eight months later President Harding appointed him Chief Justice of the U. S., which had always been the goal of his ambition.

"For God, For Country and For Yale" --was more than just a college-slogan for William Howard Taft. It represented a quality of public service, a sense of good-natured sportsmanship, a fidelity to duty that colored his whole existence.

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