Now we are at--some people think--the crisis in the Republican Party with reference to its continuance in the guidance of the Nation.
I am hopeful that the good people of the country, who know a good thing when they see it, have only chastened us in an off-year, in order that we may be better hereafter, but with no intention of shifting from shoulders that are fitted to bear the burdens of the present problems and carry them to a successful solution, to those which are untried and which have new theories of action that we do not believe in, and that we don't believe the people believe in.
However, if so be it that they desire to make a change, we shall loyally support the new government under any conditions, with the hope it will inure to the benefit of the country, but with the consolation that, if after one trial the people think they ought to go back to the old party that has served them so well in the progressive days of the Nation, they will do so—we can bear that, my friends; that is all.
SOURCE: The New York Times, 10-31-1911 p. 1
APP Note: No source known to the APP has provided any text for this event different from the above. However, it seems possible that this is only a fragment of the President's remarks on this occuasion. These remarks, apparently at a luncheon, preceded the President's departure by train in the late afternoon destined for Pittsburgh.
William Howard Taft, Remarks at the Hamilton Club of Chicago Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/363262
