Rich: "They do it in obedience to a revelation from the Lord--a revelation that proclaimed the doctrine of the eternity and the plurality of the marriage covenant. We believe that men and women, sealed in this life under proper authority, are united in the conjugal relation throughout eternity. We believe that the husband is tied to his wives, and they to him; that their children and all the generations of their children will belong to him hereafter. We believe in eternal progression; that as man is, God was; and as God is, man shall be. We believe that by obedience to this revealed covenant, we will be exalted in the celestial realm of our Father, with power in ourselves to create and people worlds. It is a never ending and constantly increasing intelligence and labor. If I keep my covenants to my wives and they to me, in this world, all the powers and rights of our marriage relation will be continued and amplified to us in the life to come; and we, in our turn, will be rulers over worlds and universes of worlds." Then--according to the unctuous 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