CHAPTER VI

MINNEAPOLIS: THE VOICE OF FIVE MILLION

THE AMERICAN LEGION went to Minneapolis a pair of words and came away a living force; a force represented by a new institution of service composed of men and women whose qualifications for service to their country and their comrades were their records with the Nation's fighting forces in the World War; a force aimed to express the ideals of citizenship of five million people; a force such as neither this nor any other country had ever seen.

The Legion emerged from Minneapolis more than a "veterans organization," though that in itself is a term to command respect in the United States. Precedent has made it another way of saying "public power." Though the habit of referring to the Legion as the "logical successor" of one or the other of the two great veterans associations which grew out of the Civil War may persist for years to come, the clearest description I can give of the Legion as established at Minneapolis is by contrasting it with those older organizations of famous and familiar memory which ruled the United States for thirty-five years.

Before the Legion came, the term "veterans association" meant, to a Northerner, the Grand Army of the Republic. The G. A. R. was a great public force. It was the backbone of the Republican party. With the exception of Cleveland's terms, it held the White House and dominated the national administration down to Roosevelt's time. In local politics in the Northern States it was relatively as strong.

In the South the counterpart of the G. A. R. is the United Confederate Veterans. The control of the U. C. V. was even more complete in the South than was that of the G. A. R. in the North. The South was prostrate in 1865. It had resisted to the last gasp. The U. C. V. became the

rallying group about which the crushed political and industrial life of the South revived. It was the dominating factor in the Democratic party.

The traditions of the G. A. R. and the U. C. V. had come forward to welcome the young Legion. One still hears the Legion referred to, in the appropriate section of the country, as the successor of the G. A. R. In the South it is the descendant and residuary legatee of the U. C. V. This has been very helpful. It established in the public mind a precedent of power. It had a vast sentimental value. Yet even from the inadequate perspective of the time of which I write, it was apparent to all reflective persons that the Legion could become in reality heir to the traditions of neither the G. A. R. nor the U. C. V., two organizations primarily political, intensely partisan, intensely sectional and always unalterably oppposed to one another. The surest way to have wrecked the Legion long before the Minneapolis convention would have been a tendency to follow in the footsteps of either of its worthy predecessors. The sons of Northern and Southern veterans alike saw that pitfall and stepped gingerly aside.

This Legion, then, was something novel and without precedent. It was a child of the new times, a product of the New Nationalism that had come through war and, through the Legion, had come to stay. It was non-sectional because it was national; non-partisan because it was all-partisan; non-political because all-political; non-sectarian because allsectarian; embracing every class, every creed, every shade of political opinion, every station and condition of life. Groups and individuals hitherto deemed forever irreconcilable united at Minneapolis by bonds which only those who forged them can destroy; and the prospect of that has grown as remote as the prospect of the political secession of a part of the Federal Union.

The Minneapolis convention stands forth with genuine claims to renown in a country where history has largely

been shaped by such representative assemblies. It lacked the dashing picturesqueness of the Paris caucus, where corporals and colonels clashed in manners often more zestful than parliamentary. It was without the irrepressible exuberance of the new freedom's first flush which lent spice and piquancy to the sessions at St. Louis. A row between an ex-colonel and an ex-corporal leaves one cold. There is no thrill. The veteran had become a somewhat tamer critter since his St. Louis days. The things which gave sparkle and color to Paris and St. Louis had passed into the shadows, but the things which were required to put over the particular job which the Minneapolis situation demanded were there in abundance. These were a willingness and a capacity for work.

It was a working convention; a serious convention. It drove ahead under the spur of great and grim convictions. From the moment Chairman Lindsley's gavel rose to announce the opening session on the morning of Monday, November 10th, until that bruised and battered instrument fell for the last time on the night of November 12th the relentless pressure toward accomplishment never flagged. In tense and often tumultuous sessions on the floor; in littered conference and committee rooms, redolent with strong tobacco, where collarless men toiled the long night hours away, the work went on with a species of inspired determination; there was something fine about it.

There was a minimum of frills and furbelows, of pointless oratory, of applause and perfunctory amenities; a minimum of all the graceful exercises which comprise the more colorful side of convention life. There was, of course, appropriate diversion for the 20,000 visitors who came to town. Half of the delegates found time to parade in a blizzard on Tuesday afternoon, and then were back at the grind, missing meals, shaves and sleep until the job was done. The job was this:

Approved and confirmed the work of the temporary organization of the American Legion; adopted a Constitution, with the splendid pre

amble written at St. Louis intact. To assure that at all times the rôle the Legion should play in the public affairs of community, State or Nation should be absolutely divorced from partisan political considerations it was written in the constitution that "no candidate or incumbent of a salaried elective public office shall hold any office in the American Legion or any department or post thereof."

Provided for the creation of the National Americanism Commission of the American Legion to realize the Legion's ideals of citizenship through a continuous and constructive patriotic educational campaign throughout the land.

Prepared to make a thorough study of the immigration question with a view of suggesting to the Government means by which immigrants who desire to subscribe to American ideals may be properly assimilated, and those who do not desire to so subscribe, deported.

Urged that Congress pass laws providing for the deportation of all "first paper" aliens who have renounced their intention of becoming citizens; that Congress make it impossible for aliens who surrendered their first papers to evade military service ever to acquire citizenship; that Congress require aliens resident in this country to acquire a knowledge of the English language and that a course in citizenship constitute a part of the curriculum of every public school; asked the Government to cancel the citizenship of and deport Victor L. Berger, Wisconsin Congressman of German birth, convicted disloyalist and twice expelled from the House.

Recommended abrogation of the so-called "gentleman's agreement" with Japan and the exclusion of Japanese from the United States on the same principles as adopted in the case of other Oriental races; that Congress send a committee to study alien colonization conditions on the Pacific coast, in Hawaii and the Philippines; that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States be amended to deny citizenship to any child born in the United States unless both parents are so eligible. The latter recommendation would prevent children of Oriental parentage from acquiring citizenship.

Opposed compulsory military service in time of peace, but recommended universal military training with the proviso that the administration of this policy should be removed from any exclusively military caste. Advocated continuance of officers' training camps and military instruction in schools and colleges.

Characterized a large standing army as extravagant and un-American. Favored a small and expertly-trained Regular Army and a national citizen army, based on universal obligation, and organized into corps, divisions and smaller units of officers and men who come from the same locality. Declared the national citizen army should be trained, equipped, officered and assigned to definite units before rather than after the commencement of hostilities, and should be administered by a general staff on which Regular and temporary officers should serve in equal number.