CONTENTS

AUGUST 29, 1924

Cover Design

By Emmelt Watson

Ambition..'. 3

By Berton Braley

Spending $10,000 000 to Make

Good a Promise 4

By Marquis James

The Guilty Party. 6

By Karl W. Detzer

Editorial 8

The Things That Count r)

By Frederick Palmer

Let's Go! ,

By Wallgren

Full Honors for the Fiag

How to Honor the Fiag

Soldiering, 1846 Style,

By Ward L. Schranlz

Hil on Follows Through Distinguished Service...

Taps

Distressed Buddhs

Outfit Reunions

Book Service

Bursts and Duds

12 15

16 21 22 22 22 22 23

NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE will be

PERSHING NUMBER

^WM> Shop

increase YourSales irt

|Cj25

V\7"EJare reproducing on this page * " a reduction of one of our ad- vertisements that opened our saJes promotion campaign this month.

This copy in a double page spread, in red and black, appeared in the August 14th issue of Printers Ink, and the August 27th issue of Adver- tising and Selling Fortnightly. The same copy appeared in full page space in black and white in the August issue of The Standard Refer- ence Rate Service and in a quar- ter page in the August issue of The Standard Rate and Data Service.

Printers Ink, Advertising and Sell- ing Fortnightly, The Standard Refer- ence Rate Service and The Standard Rate and Data Service are adver- tising trade papers whose circulation is among advertising managers, the personnel of advertising agencies, and the officers of companies that advertise nationally.

We have contracted for space in these magazines and have planned an advertising campaign of our own for the next year.

Now, in our campaign with the slogan we have adopted, "Increase Your Sales-in 1921, We'll Help You Do It," the ''we" not only means the advertising department of The American Legion Weekly, but it means the dealer influence that we have in the different trades — men who! belong to The American Legion and who are interested in their own magazine, and are in- terested in se$hg the lines of mer- chandise they handle advertised in their own magazine.

We' are ^reaching a field of our own, of readers who are at the buying age, and we are not in competition with any other magazine. The interest of our members in The

American Legion and our readers in their magazine, The American Legion Weekly, is a much ^stronger influence than any other publication can point out.

The average dealer, on account of the large newsstand circulation of many magazines, does not know how many copies of those magazines are coming into his town or city, or to whom they are going. He does not know how many of his customers really see or read the message of the manufacturers whose merchandise he is trying to sell, but the Legion- naire dealers do know exactly how many American Legion members are in their towns or cities. Because they are members of the local post, they know most of these men by their first name, AMERICAN/ andth ese dealers know a copy of The American Legion Weekly is going into the Legionnaire cus- tomer's home every week and that not only these customers, but their . families are reading and being in- fluenced by the advertisements of the manufacturers whose merchan- dise the dealers carry in stock.

Every week advertisements reach the Legionnaire consumer, who is at the buying age, and influence him to purchase at the Legionnaire dealer's store articles advertised in The American Legion Weekly.

When a manufacturer, or his sales representative, asks what magazines will move his goods from your shelves, remember your magazine and your customers who are mem- bers of your local post.

A manufacturer's advertisement in The American Legion Weekly means an increase in sales for Legion- naire dealers among Legion mem- bers and their families.

"Increase Your Sales in 1925" means "your sales," as wellxas our sales, "We'll Help You Do It" means "you" combined with your Weekly.

THE ylo-MAN

Official publication of The American Legion and The American Legion Auxiliary.

American

JL<EGION\*fe«!>

BUSINESS AND EDITORIAL OFFICES 627 West 43d Street, New York City

The American Legion Weekly is owned ex- elusively by The American Legion.

AUGUST 29. 1924

PAGE 3

AMBITION

By Berton Braley

One of the most popular books in the libraries of merchant marine ships is one on bee-keeping.

When I get through with the surgin' sea I'm gonna have a farm an' keep a bee. I'm gonna get a wife an' a snug white home A long, long ways from the ocean foam. We may have a cow an' a chick or so An' a baby pig that'll grow an' grow, But the thing that most appeals to me Is to have a hive an' a real tame bee.

With a cow an' bee lifeU seem right sunny For a cow gives milk an' a bee gives honey; An' with all the honey that a good bee makes We'll sure have plenty for the buckwheat cakes. So when I get through with the deep-sea stuff Which'll be as soon as I've saved enough, I'll settle down an' I'll live in glee The boss of a farm an' a nice tame bee.

There'll be no mate with a harsh bass voice, But a Mate I've picked of my own free choice; An' if they's kids, which I hope — gee whiz! The bee can show 'em where the honey is. For the sort of bee that I wanta find Will be a bee that is sweet an' kind. So I'll live right snug when I quit the sea With the wife an' kids an' a nice tame bee.

PAGE 4

THE AMERICAN LEGION WEEKLY

Spending $10,000,000 to Make Good a Promise

By Marquis James

TOMORROW: What the War Memorial Plaza in Indianapolis will look like when it is finished, photo- graphed from the architects' model. The project is four blocks long and one block wide. The arrow indicates the Legion's National Headquarters building, now under construction

A TIGHT green fence eight feet high encloses a sizeable plot of ground at the corner of North Meridian and St. Clair Streets, Indianapolis, and obscures it from the view.

As the character of an individual sometimes is caught and given forth again by a single trait, ofttimes the character and color of a city is reflected by a single street into which the city puts a little bit of all it has. The Champs Elysees is Paris, Fifth Avenue is New York, and Market Street is San Francisco. St. Louis may be found in Olive Street, Chicago in Michigan Avenue, New Orleans in St. Charles Avenue and its Creole antecedent, Royal Street; Enid, Oklahoma, in West Broad- way. Just so, North Meridian, in Indi- anapolis, exhibits what the Hoosier capi- tal has to offer to the world.

Indianapolis calls itself a typical American city. The slogan is used by one of its national advertisers. Thus devolves upon Meridian Street the role of the typical American thoroughfare — and it does it very well. It is a street of varying fortunes and some contrasts. Commerce marching northward lays siege to the splendid old mansions of the leisurely nineties. One by one these surrender and are evacuated in favor of the new frontier, which lies north beyond the stately white arches which span Fall Creek, a region uncharted for residential purposes twenty years ago.

St. Clair Street crosses Meridian at a point which at this moment marks the advance posts of the encroaching armies of commerce. The handsome James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Library sits in St. Clair Street, filling the block which extends east to Pennsylvania Street. The library faces the south, overlooking a pleasant little park. It is in this park that the green fence has been built, enclosing a space from which issue sounds of steamshovels and other agents of the building trades.

The building which is going up there

is the new home of The American Le- gion, which should be finished and oc- cupied by the Legion's National Head- quarters sometime next May. National Commander John R. Quinn appeared on the scene last spring and went through the rite of turning over the first spadeful of ground. It was a good husky spadeful.

Now I suggest that you inspect the two photographs which are reproduced on these pages. The one on the right shows the section of Indianapolis of which I speak; it is about to undergo a great change. The other picture shows the change as an accomplished fact — the Legion's new home in its new environment, a magnificent project of which the green fence is a beginning. This picture was made from a plaster of paris model. The left hand or west border represents a stretch of four city blocks along Meridian Street. The right hand or east border is Pennsyl- vania Street. The building at the far end, facing you, is the Riley Memorial Library. In front of it passes St. Clair Street. Note the structure in front of and to the left of the library, indicated by an arrow. This is The American Legion's house.

The Legion building, like the library and all the other structures which will adorn the war memorial plaza, will be of white Indiana limestone. It will rise four spacious stories above the landscaped grounds which will surround it. The immense columns which will run around the walls will impart an atmosphere of simple beauty such as invests Greek temples, gleamingly white among the fresh verdure of trees, flowers and landscapery.

Just across the way, and flanking the library on the right, as you face it, will go up a companion building, exactly like the Legion's home. It will shelter the Indiana Historical Society. On the lawn between the two will be a cenotaph of marble.

Symmetrical avenues of trees, border-

ing a spacious mall, will lead south from this group to a memorial obelisk. Further on, facing this memorial shaft, and glancing north up the vista of mall and trees, will stand the Indiana War Memorial, the most conspicuous object of the ensemble. The memorial's name will appear on the south side over the six columns. Below the columns will be these words: "Indiana salutes all who then served her." As one ascends the steps to enter the memorial chamber he will encounter this pledge carved in stone on the wall:

"We dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with a pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and hap- piness and the place which she has treasured."

The words are from President Wil- son's war message.

COMING on south from the Indiana Memorial brings us to the lower part of the photograph. It is a beautiful park called University Square. It is shaded by old trees, and a fountain plays in the center. It will be incor- porated intact into the memorial plaza. You may see it as it looks today — and as it will look tomorrow — in the right hand photograph.

The lower border of the picture is New York Street, across which stands the Indianapolis Postoffice, filling the block. The postoffice is a fine building of classical architecture. It will enclose the plaza on the south as the Rilev Library does on the north, and give the whole a harmonious sense of complete- ness.

Such is the new house Indiana is building for the Legion and such are its surroundings. On this typical Ameri- can street of this typical American town is going up the home of this

AUGUST 29, 1924

PAGE 5

Indiana's War Memorial Project Includes a New Home for the Ramified but Smoothly Co- ordinating Activities of the Legion's National Headquarters^^

TODAY: Bird's-eye view of the Plaza site. The buildings enclosed by the white lines, with the exception of the James Whit- comb Riley Memorial Library, occu- pying the background of this and the opposite view, will be replaced by the details of the model shown on page 4. The cost will be $10,000,000. The arrow points to the site of the Legion headquar- ters building, which will be ready next May

typical American Legion. In 1919, when Indianapolis won the spirited con- test for the honor of being the seat of the Legion's national headquarters, her spokesmen promised to build for the Legion the finest memorial home in America. The promise is being kept. The total cost of the project will be in the neighborhood of $10,000,000. It is being borne in partnership by the State of Indiana, by Marion County and by the city of Indianapolis.

Although the construction of the Le- gion building, the first structure of the group which will be completed, has only fairly begun, the project has been under way for more than four years. After the site had been selected, almost in the heart of the city, and the plans agreed upon, funds had to be raised and legal proceedings instituted to con- demn, buy and tear down two and one- half blocks of buildings. The condem- nation and purchase of all these build- ings— save two churches which will re- main standing in the plaza — has been completed. Their destruction will be accomplished as the building program progresses.

WITH people going to so much pains and expense to provide a home for the National Headquarters of The American Legion, the logical conclusion is that these headquarters are a pretty important proposition. They are im- portant, but the how and the salient particulars of this importance have never received much broadcasting. The Legion has a publicity department the mission of which has been to publicize the Legion and not its headquarters —

which is right, because a headquarters is important and interesting only when the organization it is a part of pos- sesses these qualities. National Head- quarters of the Legion is an important place because The American Legion is an important organization.

The American Legion has been de- scribed as the best insurance policy the country ever had. It has been called the common future of five million men in search of an ideal. It has been charac- terized as a great institution of serv- ice of thought and action, representing the finest conceptions of citizenship which our national life presents. It has been held up as the hope of America.

Such definitions are derived from an inspection of the activities of the Le- gion, which are many and varied. Here is a definition of the Legion, de- rived from the things — from the ad- ministrative and executive considera- tions— which make these activities pos- sible:

The American Legion is a corpora- tion. It is chartered by the Federal Government. Most corporations are chartered by state governments, but for practical purposes there is little differ- ence between a Federal and a state corporation. The stockholders of the Legion corporation are its members, and the annual stockholders' meeting is the National Convention. The president of the Legion corporation is the Na- tional Commander, chosen at the stock- holders' meeting. The Legion corpora- tion has 11,100 local offices or posts, situated in every part of the world. These posts are grouped territorially into departments, each of which super-

vises the administration of the posts under its jurisdiction. The home office, where all management, supervision and direction centers is the National Head- quarters at Indianapolis.

YOU enter a dark room and turn a switch in the wall. A chandelier full of incandescent lamps lights itself and darkness is dispelled. The factors in this operation are: (1) Your act of turning the switch, (2) the electric cur- rent and (3) the concealed wires which carried that current to the chandelier and distributed it among the lamps.

So with the Legion and its adminis- trative mechanism. Its electric current is the conviction a million men and women feel for the principles the Le- gion espouses. This energy is able to assert itself by means of the concealed wires of administration which proceed from the National Headquarters to every department and to the farthest removed of the 11,100 local posts. The Legion's administrative strands enmesh the United States and encircle the globe. They touch not only the Legion's and the Legion Auxiliary's million members, but every other person in the United States. In five years they have made the Legion a national American institution known the world over. These million ramifying wires converge at the home office of the corporation, the National Headquarters at Indi- anapolis. They make those head- quarters an important place.

Not long ago a prominent Legion- naire made a frank and interesting comment on these headquarters. This (Continued on page 17)

PAGE 6

THE AMERICAN LEGION WEEKLY

A D. C. I.

Story by

Karl W. Detzer

Illustrated

V. E. Pyles

A shot rang out across the gusty night. Then an- other. After that the air was still except for the rattle of rain

W Guilty Party

ON a quiet June night in the summer of 1919, Private John Jackson, A. E. F., slipped over a low stone wall and peered into the windows of a small cafe. French workmen were eating and drink- ing inside. The smell of good cookery floated out to the dark yard. Private Jackson reached into his pocket.

He stood in the dining room when the Frenchmen looked up. An automatic pistol showed in his hand. He waved it at the diners and conversation stopped. A waitress, hurrying in from the kitchen, dropped a tray and screamed. The proprietress hurried in after her. She, too, screamed.

"Do any of you speak English?" Private Jackson demanded.

"I do!" It was the waitress. Of course she spoke English. All wait- resses did.

"Then listen," Private Jackson went on calmly. "I don't want to hurt any of you. Just sit still, tell them, with their hands above the tables, and no one make any noise. I'll have some supper."

So he sat down at a table with his back against a wall. The other guests eyed him, their appetites gone. He had soup, and fish, and beef and fried po- tatoes, and salad and an apple and cheese. These he washed down with Bordeaux rouge, and Barsac, and Sau- terne, and Burgundy, with a snifter of cognac to touch it off. The pistol lay at his hand. Madame was attentive. The

waitress scurried at his slightest ovder.

When he had finished he demanded a napkin, wiped his mouth, thanked them all, and said good night. He backed toward the window, and darkness in the rear of the old cafe enveloped him.

Madame, the proprietress, tipped back her head and. screamed. The wait- ress wailed. The gentlemen guests drew their pocket knives, slashed the air, and demanded blood. A passing gendarme heard the disorder and en- tered timidly. He made copious notes. He forwarded these notes to the prefet. The prefet forwarded them to the eom- missaire, the commissaire forwarded them to the general of department. The general of department forwarded them to the commanding general of the Amer-

AUGUST 29. 1924

PAGE 7

ican forces, who relayed them by tele- phone to the Provost; Marshal, who sent for me.

Five days late!

But we started out on our search "for an American maurauder." Twen- ty-five years old, he was said to be; "six feet tall, with a smooth face and ruddy complexion, blue eyes and a reg- ulation American olive drab uniform." There were approximately ten thousand men answering that description in our area. And we wei-e five days late! I made a card for my index box, and thought the whole affair too bad. The fellow had enjoyed a good supper, had hurt no one . . . still, the honor of the American uniform must be upheld.

He washed it down with Bor- deaux rouge, and Barsac, and Sau- terne, and Bur- gundy, with a snifter of cognac to touch it off. The pistol lay at his hand

E couldn't be found. We didn't know his name, and there were other of- fenses in this same old town. A butcher was putting up his phutters a few nights later. Two Ameri- ca n s entered his shop. One slid a naked bayonet out of his sleeve. He promised to hack up the meat cutter and hang him on his own hooks. Hearing that, the butcher agreed to please them. So they took away ten pounds of steak, half a dozen sausages, and a variety of cheese.

"Murderers!" the meat cutter was screaming when a D. C. I. man ran up to him ten minutes later. "Thieves, sons of cows! I am ruined! I must sue the savage American government for ten thousand francs!"

Description? Two small men, rather dirty, looking much alike, and with very ugly faces. They wore the conventional olive drab. An- other case on our files.

Then the French police dropped a hint. The house by the railroad tracks five miles from town was dealing in American goods. We knew the place well enough; we watched it for months. We swooped through its door at three in the morning. Blankets, bicycles, socks, shelter tents, canteens, even con- diment cans were in the spoils. We shipped two trucks of pilfered Army supplies back to United States salvage warehouses.

We questioned the farmer who lived in the house by the tracks. He claimed that he had purchased the material. "From whom?" "Ah, from many Americans." Good enough. The French police carted farmer and wife off to jail. Three D. C. I. men took up lodging in the house. No visitors came the first night. The guard remained under cover till the second night, when some- one rapped on the door.

Two skinny Americans slipped in. They offered a bundle of blankets. My men, in civilian clothes, quietly put them

Joyce, mess officer for the outfit, gets full allowance of ra- tions each day."

Lieutenant Joyce, mess officer for the outfit! I transferred a detective sergeant into the casual de- tachment next day. His report was short but powerful. It was telephoned the following afternoon.

"Rotten grub!"

And the same day came Private John Jackson, A. E. F., his wrists in irons, and his gun in the pocket of one of my oper- ators. He had not been so successful this time. He had tried to wrest an- other meal by show of force, thinking not that the small untidy Frenchman in the corner of the cafe actually was Corporal H o 1 1 i g , D. C. I.

He told the same story. He was hun- gry . . . hungry and broke — and a mem- ber of the same casual outfit.

under arrest. In the morning they came to my office for "questioning and disposition." It was easy to check up on them. They were not even A. W. O. L.'s. They were members, in good standing, of a big casual detachment billeted in the nearby city.

WE pondered this case . . . and sent the guard back to the farm- house. The next night another Amer- ican appeared, offering a stolen bicycle for sale. He joined his comrades at my office. He, too, was from the casual camp. The next night came three more ... all from the same American, outfit.

It seemed strange. Why should six good men suddenly turn thieves, and all of them hail from one small detach- ment of less than a thousand soldiers? We talked to them seriously. They all told the same story. They were hun- gry. They were getting no food. They had no money. Day after day they starved.

I sent to the commissary.

"Plenty of food," an officer of that organization insisted. "Lieutenant

NEW cook was assigned to work at the casual kitchen. He knew little about cooking, having spent most of his life as a detective sergeant, but that did not unfit him for the kitchen there. Nothing ,to cook'. Nothing to eat!

Commissary deliv- eries were made at four p.m. to that camp. Our bogus cook lay on his bunk, watching fresh meat and flour, canned goods and the regular supplies unloaded outside the door. At four thirty sharp another truck appeared, a covered French ma- chine. Lieutenant Joyce, mess officer, boosted practically all the fresh food into the second car.

The D. C. I. man only need follow the truck. He trailed it on a motor- cycle till it backed to the door of a tidy, prosperous store. The French driver, a well-to-do grocer, confessed. For three months he had been purchasing his entire stock from Lieutenant Joyce. He came to my office with the French police and my own man who appre- hended him.

I called Colonel Pope, provost mar- shal, and told him of the case.

"These fellows, these men who have been sticking up cafes and selling con- diment cans, have been hungry, hungry enough to commit murder," I explained. "I'd like to turn them loose."

"Certainly!" he agreed. "Feed them well and send them back to their com- pany. And you go out personally and get that man Joyce . . . lieutenant, vou (Continued on page 19)

PAGE 8

THE AMERICAN LEGION WEEKLY

EDITORIAL

LP OR God and country, we associate ourselves together for the -» following purposes: To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America; to maintain law and order; to foster and perpetuate a one hundred percent Americanism; to pre- serve the memories and incidents of our association in the Great War; to inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the commu- nity, state and nation; to combat the autocracy of both the classes and the masses; to make, right the master of might; to promote peace and good ivill on earth; to safeguard and transmit to pos- terity the principles of justice, freedom and democracy ; to conse- cratc and sanctify our comradeship by our devotion to mutual helpfulness. — -Preamble to Constitution of The American Legion.

Guarding Childhood's Heritage

1"HVO years ago when the New Orleans national conven- tion of The American Legion authorized a committee of Legionnaires to make a study of the whole problem of the care of orphaned and dependent children of World War service men, the highly-trained specialists in child welfare outside the Legion became apprehensive. And this was the question which worried the experts most: would not the Legion, ignoring the lessons which the child welfare leaders had learned many years ago, rush headlong into a program of establishing a huge orphans' home or a series of homes as the sole solution of its problem?

This question has been answered most happily as the Legion finds itself on the eve of another national convention. The Legion is now carrying out a plan which is wholly in harmony with the accepted principles of child care indorsed by the nation's leading authorities in this science — for a science it surely is. The Legion long ago dispelled the idea that it regarded the institution as the sole instrumentality for carrying out the organized veteran's duty to children.

At the recent meeting of the Child Welfare League of America, and allied organizations, held in Toronto, the chairman of the Legion's National Child Welfare Committee convinced the experts of many groups of the soundness of the Legion's program. Not only that; he also presented to these men, ardent workers in a great cause, the heartening vision of the day when the Legion's strength would be given to the task of gaining childhood's full heritage for all the under-privileged children of the United States. The Legion, with its influence and numbers, would be in each community the powerful and permanent ally of those organizations which have been working to better childhood's lot.

S»6 S&6

THE plan which the Legion's National Child Welfare Committee is now carrying out is based upon these prin- ciples embodied in a resolution adopted by the San Fran- cisco national convention a year ago:

The Legion since its inception has been working for' better citizenship and to that end desires to co-operate with all ap- proved public and private agencies engaged in child welfare work.

Wherever conditions permit, the integrity of the home shall be maintained in order that the children of the same family be kept together and left in the care of their own mother, and to this end we recommend the enactment of adequate mother's pen- sion laws.

Where it is impossible for children to be maintained in their own homes, and after most careful and thorough examination and investigation of all surrounding circumstances where it is found that individual children seem adapted and appear to be fitted into the home life of certain families which desire to care for them, such children shall be placed in foster homes. This shall be done only when the Legion is in a position through local posts or otherwise to effectively and carefully follow up such children and families and thus safeguard their welfare.

Provisions shall be made for the construction, maintenance and operation of regional home schools that may be used as clearing houses to take care of children who cannot be cared for in their own homes or foster homes or in other ways pro-

vided. The establishment of such regional home schools shall be fostered by the Legion and carried on either by the individual departments or by groups of departments as the needs develop and funds are made available. Such regional homes shall be or- ganized on what is generally known as the cottage plan and in line with the best practice and experience governing the organi- zation and construction of such cottage homes.

This outline makes it plain that whatever "homes" the Legion establishes in its child welfare activities shall be only incidental and subordinate to the program as a whole. And so, the first of the regional homes at Otter Lake, Michigan, now caring for thirty children, is but a beginning, only one detail in the four-fold program in which emphasis is placed first on home-aid and placement where possible. In addition to the children now in the Michigan billet, many times their number have passed through the biilet in the last year, receiving some temporary help and then returning to relatives or placed in new family homes.

Even the Legion's choice of a name for its cottage center at Otter Lake emphasizes its departure from the outworn conception of the "orphans' home." It calls that center The American Legion Children's Billet, and the theory of its use is in line with the connotation of the word billet. Billet to men of the A. E. F. meant a temporary home. The Otter Lake cottage-center and other billets yet to be established — the next one will be on a farm in Kansas, under arrangements which are being worked out — will con- form to the service man's idea of the best obtainable tem- porary home under existing circumstances. Meanwhile in Kansas sixty children have been placed with families.

06 &6 &6

THE billet is not regarded primarily as an institution in which the child shall be placed in infancy and from which he shall emerge in late youth. Its principal function will be to care for children who must be separated from their parents temporarily because of such conditions as sickness and misfortune. These children will be caied for until their parents are able to take them back. It will also serve as a clearing house for true orphans or those who can never hope to rejoin their parents, caring for them until they may be placed in permanent homes with families deemed best fitted to rear them. The billets reproduce as far as possible normal American family life.

The chairman of the Legion's national committee esti- mates that before ten years have passed more than 30,000 children will be receiving Legion assistance of some sort. The report of the Legion's national committee to the San Francisco convention contained a plea for the saving of neglected children as a means of cutting down society's appalling scrap heap of wrecked adult lives. It read:

The makings often of thousands of derelicts who later find permanent habitats in poorhouses, insane asylums and jails are today leading lives of peonage and slavery in America's facto- ries, fields and sweatshops. Two million children, boys and girls, who never go to school, go daily into these industrial cauldrons where their youth and hopes are coined into profit for their em- ployers. These children work long hours for small pay. . . . They are little human machines who are given less care than the iron machines with which they toil. If their muscles are hard, their minds are dull, their souls are dead. . . . What wonder if when old enough to realize the soddenness of their lives, to comprehend the monstrous injustice to which they have been subjected — what wonder that they should revolt and strike the financial system and so-called civilization that consumed their youth and lost them their chance in life? What wonder that our poorhouses and jails are filled, that the bolshevik is abroad in the land?

These words carry the conviction that the Legion, in planning and carrying out a child welfare program, is meeting one of its greatest opportunities for public service.

AUGUST 29, 1924

PAGE 9

A Personal Page by Frederick Palmer

The Things That Count

" £iMJLE when you say it!" Anybody who has seen army life knows that it is all right if you smile when you use certain epithets and that when you do not smile you'd better be ready for trouble.

The man who carries a gun in a rough community knows that the best way to avoid having to us"e it is to smile, and that it is well, at the same time, to keep it loaded and to let the fellow with his hat brim drawn down over a scowl know that it is. When you do need that gun how you do need it — on what .'hort notice! When you use it you're past the smiling stage.

General Pershing did not smile much at the Germans in France. He was past the smiling stage with the declaration of war. He will be smiling on Defense Day, September 12th.

This week, we arc to consider his method of keeping the peace. Last week we considered two other methods. We found that no peace plan which would lead the nations to lay down their arms and guarantee permanent peace had yet been adopted. And we found that no engine of war whose powers of destruction would make war impossible had yet been invented. Both of these methods had been talked for centuries. Mean- while we are living in the present.

General Pershing's method is the one that the other nations are applying in practice. He would carry a gun and see that it is ready for business. As our leading expert he knows how much heavier the cost of war is if we are unprepared.

We slipped into unpreparedness after the Revolution and when we needed a gun and needed it quick in 1812 the British so far had the jump on us that they were able to burn Wash- ington. After the Civil War we got slack again. Our navy became obsolete wooden hulls against steels until we started the White Squadron, our regular army was reduced to 25,000 and our neglected National Guard went into the war with Spain with rifles that carried less than a thousand yards against rifles that carried twice as far.

li we had been prepared in 1812 Britain might have given us our rights at sea for which we had to fight. If we had been prepared in 1898 Spain might have freed Cuba without our having recourse to force. There are two wars which the Pershing plan might have prevented.

But there are people who say that if you prepare for war you breed war, if you build an army you are bound to use it. We have had the armed strength to overrun Mexico, but wre have not used it. We have kept smiling at Mexico, while our loaded gun has been a restraint on her wild elements.

A FTER the Spanish War wc trebled our regular army and we reorganized our National Guard .and whole military system. If we had not and, in 1917, had had only our pre- Spanish war nucleus We should have been more unprepared than we were for the World War. We should not have been ready for St. Mihiel as soon as September 12, 1918, which was seventeen months after our entry into the War.

After the World War we again increased our regular nucleus, applied the lessons of organization learned in France and pro- vided for an organized reserve, by the Defense Act of 1920.

On September 12th, St. Mihiel Day, we are having a Defense Test. This does not mean that we are going to mobilize all our forces on an actual war footing. We are to have the answer to the question, "How ready are you?" to all who can help and offer to help in the defense of the nation. As a people we are to think and act in terms of defense on that day. To those who say that there is no danger of war in sight the answer is: "WTho would have thought in September, 1913,

that Mre should have an army at St. Mihiel in September, 1918?"

Whatever the size of our army, whatever the nature of our defenses we as an efficient people want them efficient for their size. Otherwise we are wasting our money and do not know how we stand. Defense Day is a test of efficiency, taking account of stock, an inspection in each corp's area according to the local commander's direction, and in keeping with the sentiment of the community. We are simply going to see in what condition our gun is if we should need to use it in a hurry as we have had to in the past. We are not going to draw our hat brim down with a frown and put a chip on our shoulder. We are going to smile, or if we are not, we are not making a fair test of the American spirit. And the spirit is what counts.

A brawling spirit would mean that we wanted to pick a fight. Pershing is not a brawler. The American people are not brawlers, and our ex-service men are not. Buddies know what war means, and on that day they and all the people will have, if they will make it so — and otherwise they have missed one of the big values of the test — a reminder in renewed familiarity of the terrible processes of war as warning to keep out of needless war. It is often the forgetfulness of this which allows nations to be drawn unwittingly into war.

A RMIES stand for material force. But so do the police. So do firemen who fight not men but fires. The police- man smiles on his beat, but we know he has a gun and a club to use if need be. He docs not go about picking quarrels and beating and shooting people because he has a club and a gun. Public opinion commands him. It also commands the soldier who makes war only under orders. It sets the spirit of the Defense Test.

When you pass a fire engine house you do not say: "This town must be fond of fires." School fire drills do not encourage fires, but awaken the children's imagination to the meaning of fires and how to guard against them. Forest rangers, who are trained to fight fires, also put ap signs not to throw lighted matches about. But people continue to throw lighted matches about. Human nature is careless; it has many passions. Fires have a way of breaking out and wars have.

Defense Day presents no picture of the assembling and maneuvers of vast armed hosts of conscripts such as regaled the eyes of the European war-lords before the war. Our nation depends upon all our people if war does break out.

"Now I don't want to fight with you," said a Western cow- boy to a tenderfoot in the old days, "and I do not want you to pick a fight, with me. Before you do let me show you how I can shoot at a target and then let's speak fair and see if we can't settle our differences in a friendly way. Take it from me, this shooting is no good unless you just have to do it."

Compare this view with that of a Balkan officer whom I heard say: "Of course, we're going to have another war. What would we do without wars? They're the big sport."

• If there is any man in the United States who feels in this way, whether he is a soldier or not, he is a fool and the kind of