commentary by Michael L. Bromley
copyright 2005

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Bromley's Book Reviews

William Howard Taft: Confident Peacemaker
by David H. Burton (2004)
Entered: Feb 20/05

[* Note: This review is my draft of a book endorsement that appears on the back cover of this marvelous book]

David Burton's is a fine study of the bravery of principle and of action that William Howard Taft brought to mankind's fundamental problem of getting along. While Burton explains the origins of Taft's views towards peaceful settlement of international disputes, his family, his experience as Judge, as administrator of the Philippines, as Secretary of War, and as President, the more important story told is of Taft's prescient view of the mechanics of world order and the necessary, real world elements to it, from trade to arms control to international law. Taft's insight was that peace was far more complicated than a mere absence of war, and that peace, rather, was far more difficult than war. War, Taft believed, was most and desperately simple.

Unlike the easy nationalistic opposition that Theodore Roosevelt threw at Taft's Arbitration treaties negotiated while President, and, later, at Woodrow Wilson's stubborn idealism, the Taft that Burton brings out is deft in both the ideal and the real, and entirely unafraid of those steps, so easy to dismiss, that are required to join them. Burton's title, "Confident Peacemaker," gives apt celebration of the brave, unfailing faith that Taft held for workable solution.

Burton skillfully illuminates Taft's seemingly colliding and ultimately prescient lines that were to become the hallmark the American Century. Sadly, Taft's ideas came a generation short of realization.
 

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