HEROES: No Seven-Toed Pete

For the first time in its 21 years of noisy, gaudy convening, the American Legion had its annual party last week with most of the world at war. Despite their routine horseplay which for four days turned Chicago upside down, the Legionnaires never quite achieved the hysteria of former conventions. The high was a veteran in a bonnet flourishing a baby’s bottle.

Middle age might have had something to do with it. Also, thoughtful Legionnaires, watching parading Sons of the American Legion, whose average age was 17, must have recalled that the minimum U. S. draft age in the last war was 18. Nor are all Legionnaires too old to go again.

So thick were war spectres in committee meetings that the pension ghost could hardly edge in. Chief concerns of the convention were strict neutrality and preparedness. Officially the embargo fight was left to Congress, though a random poll of 423 Legionnaires showed that 66% were opposed to the act as it stands.

The Legion passionately recommended: Prompt expansion of the regular Army and National Guard; a program to insure a supply of raw and manufactured material to equip and supply land & sea forces of at least 1,000,000 men for a period of not less than one year. It also demanded a Navy second to none, bases at Guam and Wake Islands, an impregnable Panama Canal, an Alaskan National Guard. With no less passion it asked for legislation to outlaw the Communist Party.

Speakers included: Non-Veterans Mary Pickford and Henry Ford; British and French representatives, who made restrained pleas for the Allied cause; and General Hugh S. Johnson, who had been actively fermenting since World War II began and at Chicago finally blew out the cork. His big idea: Stay out of war. Why? Because: “We all went out in the last war to abolish all former diplomatic games of seven-toed pete with deuces wild. . . . With smiles and smirks our associates accepted our childish enthusiasms—while they took our money and our lives. . . . We were told we were going to get international decency. Boy, look at the damn thing.”

Chief candidate for election as the Legion’s national commander was Raymond J. Kelly—genial, redhaired, toothy Irishman, ex-artilleryman. He was one of the War Veterans who petitioned Frank Murphy to run for Mayor of Detroit, and as general counsel of the Detroit Street Railways, was part of Frank Murphy’s Detroit “New Deal.” Later he was appointed Corporation Counsel, the office he now holds.

Six times Kelly had tried for national commander of the Legion, twice getting as far as the nomination. The “kingmakers,” who run Legion politics, opposed him. Stephen F. Chadwick beat him last year. But this time Kelly won.

Addressing his cheering fellow-veterans, he said, “As your national commander I pledge myself to go from this convention and make known to our fellow-citizens your mandate to keep our nation out of any armed conflict overseas. . . . Attempting to cloak our neutrality with a biased belligerency must inevitably lead us straight into war.”

Having seen Mrs. William H. Corwith, of Rockville Centre, N. Y.. elected president of the American Legion Auxiliary, the Legionnaires threw the last empty beer can in the gutter, put away their rattles and went home.