Word: elihu
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...have been President of the U. S. only six were not, at some time in their lives, contemporaries of Elihu Root.* John Tyler was President when Root was born. Twenty-one more Presidents took office during his lifetime. Last week when Death, as it must to all men, came to Elihu Root, the incumbent of the White House might never have been there but for Mr. Root's sense of duty...
Actual operators of the War Department's chief charge* are the General Staff, composed of the Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief and five Assistant Chiefs, professional soldiers all. After that victorious fiasco, the War with Spain, wise Elihu Root perceived that running even a standing army of 25,000 was a task too intricate for the civilian chief of the War Department, of which he was then Secretary. Under his direction the Army's command was radically reorganized in 1903, the General Staff system adapted from the British, French and Germans...
...Elihu Root was 54. at the top of his profession and the hero of such bright young Republicans as Nicholas Murray Butler. Henry Lewis Stimson, Robert Low Bacon, when in 1899 President McKinley let it be known that he wanted a first-rank lawyer for Secretary of War. Someone was needed who could plan and plead reorganization in the slipshod War Department, set up administrations for the colonies newly-won from Spain. Appointed, Lawyer Root did both jobs brilliantly. He stayed on with Theodore Roosevelt and, when John Hay died, he became one of the ablest Secretaries of State...
Lesser men than he were among the seven U. S. Presidents whom Elihu Root has counseled. In 1908 his own qualifications for the Presidency were unequalled. Teddy said he would crawl on hands & knees from the White House to the Capitol to make Root President. Then he chose Taft as his successor. He knew, as Republican managers did again in 1916, that Statesman Root was simply not "available." He was too brilliant. Politicians had long since learned that the U. S. electorate distrusts high intellect and imperturbable calm...
...Elihu Root spends the winter months in Manhattan, the rest in Clinton, N. Y. opposite his beloved Hamilton College where, as "Cube" Root, son of the mathematics professor, he was the youngest and smartest member of his class (1864). Alert, he reads widely, keeps abreast of current affairs. But what he thinks, he keeps almost wholly for those of his "young" intimates who are still alive...