One of many amazing passages from Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man. To very slightly paraphrase Michael Herr: simple surfaces, long reverberations:

For years now, Roosevelt had been reading Duranty in the New York Times on Russia. The godlessness troubled him--the purge of the churches. He told Perkins about his meetings with Maxim Litvinov the Soviet envoy. “Well now, Max, you know what I mean by religion. You know what religion gives a man. You know the difference between the religious and the irreligious person.” He went on: Look here, sometime you are going to die, Max, and when you die, you are going to remember your old father and mother—good, pious Jewish people who believed in God and taught you to pray to God.” Roosevelt told Litvinov that religious freedom was important if the the United States was to recognize the Bolsheviks, and he told Perkins he thought he had made an impression on Litvinov.