body, of which he took such splendid care, which had served him so well in the enforcement of his intellectual plans. The flash of his eye indicated intellectual genius of the highest type and his tender words to me, personally, made me realize that his heart was wide and deep as the sea. But the thing that most impressed me was his moral heroism, his simplicity, his honesty, his justice and his intense devotion to the right. I felt that his promotion was the tribute a mighty nation had paid to the man the crown of whose greatness was his goodness, and I felt that there was a most intimate relation between Theodore Roosevelt, the ruler and favorite of a nation, and the church and the God of his fathers. Recently Colonel Roosevelt said to me: "You remember the walk we had from the church to the White House, a dozen years ago, when I turned my heart inside out to you, and told you I believed God had raised me up to lead the nation in its desperate fight for its life against the illegal despotism of combined wealth in collusion with corrupt municipal, state and federal office holders, and that my daily prayer was that God would spare my life long enough to see that menace to the republic removed? He did spare me, and I thank Him. But I thank Him most for sparing me to take a part in the settlement of the great world war. No Hebrew prophet was ever called up to cry out against the danger confronting his nation, or the moral evils that curse the world, more truly than I have been called up to plead for an ideal Americanism, strong, brave, just and pure, 100 per cent. loyal American, and also to fight to the death absolute despotism in its oppressions and crimes, which in its demoniacal rage for world rule has killed off the flower of the world, its young men, and caused more agony than has ever been suffered since the world began. I thank God that I have lived to see the victory which places the United States in the forefront of the free peoples of the world and which means universal democracy with its liberty, happiness, thrift and love to the millions of the oppressed children of earth, which will hasten the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ in the world, with its universal peace, righteousness, and love." I know that Theodore Roosevelt took the Bible as the standard of individual character and national virtue, for he told me so, and I believe that God was in him and back of him in his miraculously great personality and service for his country and the world. |