Mr. Roosevelt and the Pope
By Editor
SOMEHOW the pope's traditional autocratic ideas and Mr. Roosevelt's free republican spirit do not harmonize very well. Mr. Roosevelt expresses his high respect for the pope as an individual and as the head of a great church, and would much like an interview with the "Holy Father," but he can submit to no conditions. As he will not submit to conditions Mr. Roosevelt can not be presented. Our ex-president freely grants the pope the right to receive or not to receive whomsoever he will and on whatsoever conditions he may name, but retains his own right to refuse to "submit to any conditions which in any way would limit my freedom of conduct." The whole trouble is over our Methodist friends. Vatican authorities say that the pope was willing that Mr. Roosevelt should visit any other church in Rome save that of the Methodists, and they were willing that Mr. Roosevelt should claim the right to visit the Methodist people if he would give private assurance that he would not do it. Mr. Roosevelt wishes no controversy over it in America, but there will be. The whole world is talking. Mr. Roosevelt visited King Victor Emmanuel twice, and will afterward visit all the great rulers of Europe. These are incidents, but they are also index fingers which point to great and decisive events in the future.