that the power of the nation would intervene. They
could work only secretly for the fulfillment of that hope.

At first, in President Roosevelt they saw the promise of their
salvation. He had opposed the election of Apostle Smoot. When the report
of the apostle's candidacy had first reached Washington, the President
had summoned to the White House Senator Thomas Kearns of Utah and
Senator Mark Hanna, who was chairman of the National Republican
committee; and to these two men he had declared his opposition to
the candidacy of a Mormon apostle as a Republican aspirant for a
Senatorship. At his request Senator Hanna, as chairman of the party,
signed a letter of remonstrance to the party chiefs in Utah, and
President Roosevelt, at a later conference, gave this letter to
Senator Kearns to be communicated to the state leaders. Senator Kearns
transmitted the message, and by so doing he "dug his political grave" as
the Mormon stake president, Lewis W. Shurtliff, expressed it.

Colonel C. B. Loose of Provo went to Washington on behalf of the Church
authorities. He was a Gentile, a partner of Apostle Smoot and of some of
the other Mormon leaders in business undertakings, a wealthy mining man,
a prominent Republican. It was reported in Utah that his arguments for
Smoot carried some weight in Washington. President Roosevelt was to be
a candidate for election; and the old guard of the Republican party,
distrustful of the Roosevelt progressive policies, was gathering for
a grim stand around Senator Mark Hanna. Both factions were playing for
votes in the approaching national convention. I have it on the authority
of a Mormon ecclesiast, who was in the political confidence of the
Church leaders, that President Roosevelt was promised the votes of
the Utah delegation and such other convention votes as the Church
politicians could control. The death of Senator Hanna made this promise
unnecessary, if there ever was an explicit promise. But this much is
certain. President Roosevelt's opposition to Apostle Smoot, for whatever
reason, changed to favor.

The character and impulses of the President were of a sort to make him
peculiarly susceptible to an appeal for help on the part of the Mormons.
He had lived in the West. He knew something of the hardships attendant
upon conquering the waste places. He sympathized with those who dared,
for their own opinions, to oppose the opinions of the rest of the
world. He had received the most adulating