for the first time American veterandom would sit in a truly representative congress and undertake the tremendous responsibility of the future of the American Legion. What would that future be? Here is the answer that Henry D. Lindsley gave a fortnight before the convention:

The future of the American Legion is the common future of five millions of men; it is the aggregate of what these men individually think and do. It is the ideal which was in the hearts of these men when they were willing to die that their country might live. It is the ideal in their hearts now as they firmly determine their country shall continue to live.

The American Legion represents concretely the determination of these five millions of men that those who would destroy the flag for which they fought shall not live under its protecting folds. It represents the further determination of these men that our country shall continue to be the land of law and order, and that the Constitution of the United States shall be supreme in its power over every man and woman who remains in this country. It, through its members, recognizes the great truth that there is but one way in which a democratic people can correct evils of government, and that this way is through orderly changes as determined best from time to time by the people themselves.

The American Legion intends that justice from government shall be extended to the men who served in the Army and the Navy in this war, and to their dependents, but that this justice must include in its consideration every other man and every other woman in the land. The American Legion stamps class-selfishness as wrong and as short-sighted as individual selfishness. Made up, as the American Legion is, of men from every class and in every walk of life, it will set its face against the supremacy of any class in our American life.

These thoughts and ideals and purposes are bound up in the future of the American Legion. Through it they will find expression and by its power concrete things will be accomplished. There is no power that can destroy the American Legion except the American Legion itself. Its usefulness cannot be diminished except through its own acts.

The American Legion has the confidence and support of the American public. The Legion appreciates this confidence and accepts this support, and enters into its broader life with full sense of the responsibilities which go with power. It will open its convention in Minneapolis with solemn purpose. It will lightly pass on no big thing. It will be ruffled by no chance wind. It knows it has a task to do and will perform it.

With faith in God and country, with faith in itself, the American Legion will march on for the years to come. Under the flag we love now as in the days of battle, the American Legion faces the future with high hope and determined purpose.

Time has revealed the remarkably prophetic nature of Mr. Lindsley's utterance. There were a great many people, inside and out of the organization, who held the highest hopes for the Legion, but who would not have cared to have been placed on record in the strong words of Lindsley. "No power can destroy the American Legion except the Legion itself." Granted. But what would the American Legion "itself" do at this convention? For the first time the real voice of the soldier and sailor was to be heard. St. Louis was merely a whisper. The splendid constitutional creed of that body was not the universal expression of all the veterans. Minneapolis could accept, amend or repudiate it.

The American veteran-what would he do? What would he say? What did he want? Why did he want it? In the American Legion the American veteran had in his hands an unmistakably great potential force. How would he choose to use it?

These were questions of moment. Matters of importance depended upon the answers, which only the convention to be held at Minneapolis could give.

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