The Glenwood post., 1912-10-05
Stephen PEBBLES Lauds Taft
and Pleads for Support
for Re- election
TAFT AAS made GOOD

The old settlers of Garfield county
nearly all remember stephen PEBBLES,
for many years the owner of splen-
did ranch between Glenwood and Car
bondale and later a resident of the
New Castle country. The Post man re-
calls with pleasure Mr.. PEBBLES loyal
republicansm and especially the very
high esteem in which he has always
held William II. Taft, his high appre
ciation of Mr.. Taft beginning many
years before the latter was called to
the presidents chair.
From his new home Mr.. PEBBLES has
remembered the Post and its readers
by forwarding the following very ear
nest letter which we publish with
thanks to our old Garfield county
friend:
Goshen, Oregon, Sept. IS, 1912.
EDITOR OF THE POST:
Will you give me space to tell my old
neighbors that it seems to me that
this is campaign in which it is well
to consider, above all things else, the
character of the candidates-.the candi-
dates for president, | mean?
That course, l am persuaded, viii!
greatly simplify the problem with
fully as much will depend on the char
acter of the president during the next
four years as upon the declared policy
of the successful party. 1t will simpl:-
fly our problem because, after this
course is adopted, l am sure very few
: IF US will need to consider the claims
of more than two of the three promi-
nent candidates.
Colonel Roosevelt is a very smart
man. Probably he has not been
equalled in smartness by any man who
has appeared in American public life,
though the late Benjamin F. Butler
must have been very close second.
In addition to this he is a man of sn-
perabundant energy. But smartness and
energy are not the only or the chief
requisites for the office to which the
colonel again Sypires. We would have
in our president the judicial mind
which the colonel lacks. In other words,
We would have our president level
headed man, and the colonel is not cell
ebratei for level-headedness. OF
ha
tleman, and alas, that it is true-we
may almost say of the colonel, in view
of his course during the past few
months, as the Duke of Wellington
said of his great antagonist. But be-
yond all else he should be man CT
great moral strength, and the colonel,
since his entrance igto this contest,
has seemed to subordinate every moral
principle to his ambition. In short, if,
as ] have suggested, we make the char
aeter of the candidate the test, then
the colonel's claim need no longer be
considered.
For Governor Wilson I have not one
word of dispraise. Undoubtedly he is
a great scholar; undoubtedly he is a
gentleman. A president of one of the
great universities of the country, as
governor of New Jersey-wherever he
has been tried-he has done well. And
if by chance he becomes the next presi-
dent of the United States, no one Will
wish him God-speed more heartily than
I shall do.
But President Taft is pre-eminent n
those qualities which fit man to be
the chief executive of great nation.
-Four years ago 1 said, as the files OF
one of your county papers will show
I believe, however, that my article
was published anonymously,-that Mr..
Taft was entitled to a greater degree
of confidence than any other man whom
the republican party had made q can
didate for a first term as president.
By temperament, by training, by his
high moral sense, his unflinching integ-
rity in all the relations in which ne
had been Placed, he was entitled to an
unquestioning trust.
Ard now / am prepared to reiterate
with increased emphasis all that l then
said. have in no sense been disap-
pointed in his adm n stration. On the
whole it has been the most satisfying
of any we have had since ] became d