gossip of the devout--President
Roosevelt saw the true answer to his own desire to know what was to
become of his mighty personality after this world should have fallen
away from him! He saw, in this faith, a possible continuation throughout
eternity of the tremendous energies of his being! He was to continue to
rule not merely a nation but a world, a system of worlds, a universe of
worlds! And it is told--sometimes solemnly, sometimes with a grin--that,
in the Temple at Salt Lake, a proxy has stood for him and he has been
baptized into the Mormon Church; that proxies have stood for the members
of his family and that they have been sealed to him; and finally that
proxies have stood for some of the great queens of the past (who had not
already been sealed to Mormon leaders) and that they have been sealed to
the President for eternity!

[FOOTNOTE: It is a not uncommon practice in the Mormon Church thus to
"do a work" for a Gentile who has befriended the people or otherwise won
the gratitude of the Church authorities.]

This may sound blasphemous toward Theodore Roosevelt--if not toward the
Almighty--but it is told, and it is believed, by hundreds and thousands
of the faithful among the Mormon people. It is given to them as the
secret explanation of President Roosevelt's protection of the Mormon
tyranny--a protection of which Apostle Hyrum Smith boasted in a sermon
in the Salt Lake tabernacle (April 5, 1905) in these equivocal words:
"We believe--and I want to say this--that in President Roosevelt we
have a friend, and we believe that in the Latter-Day Saints President
Roosevelt has the greatest friendship among them; and there are no
people in the world who are more friendly to him, and will remain
friendly unto him just so long as he remains true, as he has been, to
the cause of humanity."

The Smiths have their own idea of what "the cause of humanity" is.

Chapter XV. The Struggle For Liberty

As early as 1903, before the Smoot investigation began, the Utah State
journal (of which I became editor) was founded as a Democratic daily
newspaper, to attempt a restoration of political freedom in Utah and
to remonstrate against the new polygamy, of which rumors were already
insistent. I was at once warned by Judge Henry H. Rolapp (a prominent
Democrat on the District bench, and secretary of the Amalgamated Sugar
Company) that we need not look for aid from the political or business
interests of the community,