The average American citizen will admit that the average American statesman, even if he be not far-sighted, looks at least a year ahead, in matters where both his personal fortunes and those of the political party to which he belongs are intimately related to what he may be doing at the time. If in 1903 Governor Taft's administration of affairs in the Philippines was wholly uninfluenced by any possible effect it might have on President Roosevelt's chances for becoming an elected President in 1904, then he was a false friend and a very poor party man as well. Assuming that he was neither, let us examine his course regarding the disturbances of public order in the Philippines in that year, as related to the first and most sacred duty of every government, adequate protection for life and property. In President McKinley's original instructions of April 7, 1900, to the Taft Commission, after quoting the final paragraph of the articles of capitulation of the city of Manila: This city, its inhabitants * * * and its private property of all descriptions * * * are hereby placed under the special safeguard of the faith and honor of the American army; the President had added: As high and sacred an obligation rests upon the Government of the United States to give protection for property and life * * * to all the people of the Philippine Islands. * * * I charge this Commission to labor for the full performance of this obligation, which concerns the honor and conscience of their country. We will probably never again have a better man at the head of the Philippine Government than William H. Taft. We have no higher type of citizen in the republic to-day than the man now [410] at the head of it. In the Outlook of September 21, 1901, there appeared an article on the Philippines written in the summer previous by Vice-President Roosevelt, entitled "The First Civil Governor," which began as follows: A year ago a man of wide acquaintance both with American public life and American public men [411] remarked that the first Governor of the Philippines ought to combine the qualities which would make a first-class President of the United States with the qualities which would make a first-class Chief Justice of the United States, and that the only man he knew who possessed all these qualities was Judge William H. Taft, of Ohio. The statement was entirely correct.