Topic 13
HIS A SIMPLE CREED

DURING the 1916 campaign Colonel Roosevelt had an attack of dry pleurisy which kept him away from church one Sunday.  Late that afternoon I called and remarked that the "boys thought it funny you did not go to church."

" Huh, they did, did they? Well, you just tell them that if they think dry pleurisy is a joke, they’d better try it.  I am just going to stay right in here the next four or five days.  Anyway, so far as church is concerned, I just had the Reverend Talmage up to look me over, the church came to me, and I've had the benefit of clergy.

"Speaking of church, you once told me you were heterodox.  That's right, isn't it? Well, do you know, I think — I wonder if you recall one verse of Micah that I am very fond of — 'to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God' — that to me is the essence of religion.  To be just with all men, to be merciful to those to whom mercy should be shown, to realize that there are some things that must always remain a mystery to us, and when the time comes for us to enter the great blackness, to go smiling and unafraid.

"That is my religion, my faith.  To me it sums up all religion, it is all the creed I need.  It seems simple and easy, but there is more in that verse than in the involved rituals and confessions of faith of many creeds we know.

"To love justice, to be merciful, to appreciate that the great mysteries shall not be known to us, and so living, face the beyond confident and without fear — that is life.

"That's too simple a creed for many of us, though.  Perhaps it is as well and that through more involved paths and mazes of theology the majority should seek the same result.

" I can quarrel with no man because of his religion.  The Roman Catholic, the Jew, the Protestant, the Mohammedan, the follower of Confucius — all are right so long as they seek to follow what their leaders have taught.  You have done much of prison work.  You know that the Roman Catholic is in prison, not because of his faith, but because he broke away from it; the Jew is there because he and the synagogue are no longer friends; the Protestant, because his religion has ceased to be a living thing and his soul has atrophied.

"You know that.

"My, but I have no patience with those who attack, who would destroy a man's belief in religion — no patience with those who would convert the Jew en masse, or the Catholic.  More likely than not, where they succeed at all they succeed only in destroying something — they take something real away and give nothing in return, leaving the victim bankrupt.  I am always sorry for the faithless man, just as I am sorry for the woman without virtue.

"I have found, though, that however they may appear outwardly, most men at bottom are religious, just as the preponderating majority of men are honest and of women virtuous.  Otherwise our civilization would end overnight.

" Most men, I believe, are good citizens according to their lights.  Take' Big Tim' Sullivan, for example.

"Tim came to me while I was in the White House to get a pardon for a friend.  The man was in Atlanta for blowing a post office safe, shooting the watchman, and I know not what.  Tim was insistent that he had reformed and that he’d go straight if he were pardoned.  The Post Office folk did not think so, neither did the Department of Justice.  They insisted the man must not be pardoned.  But Tim was so sure, so positive, however, that his friend had changed that I decided to favor him.

"I'll give you this pardon, Tim,' said I, 'on one condition.  You must take it to Atlanta yourself, see this man before he has a chance to see any of his old pals, and warn him that if he goes wrong again, he will not only be punished to the limit, but will have to finish out this sentence as well.  There will be no mercy for him.  And at the end of the year I want you to bring the fellow here and let me know how he's made out.'

"Tim agreed to this.  He would have agreed to anything and kept his agreement, too.  He got the pardon and went his way.  I forgot all about the thing until just one year after, I was told Tim was waiting to see me.  He had an appointment, he told the attendant.  I could not recall any, but I always liked the big fellow and I had him sent in.

"' Mr.  President,' said he, when he came in, ' I’ve come about that fellow Blank.  You know you told me to bring him here when he’d been out a year and let you know how he's been acting.  He's outside now.'

'"Yes, I remember,' I told him.  'How has he been doing?'

"'He's been perfect, Mr.  President,' said the big fellow.  'When I got him to New York I put him to work behind a wheel in a gambling house, and he's been doing fine ever since.'

"That was good behavior, as Big Tim saw it!"

The Colonel concluded, saying: "Well, you're getting the sermon you missed by not going to church, and I have been talking religion.  It's something I do very seldom.  After all, one's religion is a private thing and one is apt to be misunderstood.

"So — if I should say publicly or you should print one half of what we have said here today, some half baked ass of a preacher would attack me tomorrow for endorsing the Pope; another because I am a Mohammedan at heart; and another would see in my tolerance for the rabbi proof that my right name is Rosenfelt or Rosen thai."

This little "sermon" was delivered shortly after the 1916 convention.  Through the chat, of which it was a part, it was apparent that the Colonel was in an introspective mood.  He was making, it seemed, a brave effort to conceal the hurt received at Chicago.  During this talk I could not down the feeling that like many another, wounded in spirit, he was consciously or unconsciously turning to religion for comfort.

As we were parting, Hayes, his ex-soldier secretary, came up the drive with the news that President Wilson had called the National Guard for possible service in Mexico.  The Colonel looked far off over Long Island Sound in a thoughtful way, then shook his head.

" Can you say anything on that, Colonel? " I asked.

"No," said he, and his teeth clicked.  "Let Hughes talk.  It is his fight."