It may be true that after eighteen years of unselfish devotion and conspicuously efficient and faithful service to the American public, as solicitor general, United States circuit judge, governor of the Philippines, secretary of war and President of the United States, Mr. Taft had failed to secure popularity with the thoughtless, the discontented and the revolutionary, and with that part of the press that lives on sensationalism and muck-raking. But such popularity should hardly be the test of qualification for the great office of President of the United States. We know that Lincoln was so unpopular with the unthinking and impatient in 1864 that he despaired of re-election and that he expected defeat at the polls unless the army could save the day and change public opinion by some striking successes. Popularity with the unreasoning and discontented was easily within the reach of President Taft had he sought it. In view of the prestige of his high office and the reverence it commands, he had only to practice the well-known arts of the demagogue by which crowds are stirred and led astray--as well known to him as to all who read history. He had only to issue from time to time high-sounding declarations about his staunch patriotism, his own virtue, his uncompromising veracity, his self-sacrificing loyalty to duty, the infallibility of his judgment, the purity of his motives, and the corruption and mendacity of his adversaries. He had only to rail at corporations, at the builders of the industries of the country and at bankers and capitalists, in order to secure the applause of envy and discontent. He had only to inveigh against predatory wealth to become at once the idol of predatory poverty. But his self-respect would not allow him to stoop so low and to pander to what is weakest, if not basest, in human nature, and his sense of duty would not permit him thus to degrade the great office of President of the United States. The ingratitude of republics is proverbial; yet surely it would have been an unparalleled act of ingratitude for President Taft's own party to refuse him the renomination he had earned and deserved. The lesson that the repudiation of President Taft by his own party would have taught the country and future generations would have been demoralizing. It would have constituted a warning to all our present and future public officers that with us Americans conspicuously efficient and faithful public service goes for naught, and that Republican public officers, from the President of the United States down to the lowest, must not expect to be judged by their acts, ability and character, but as they have succeeded in cultivating the applause of the unthinking.