HEROES: Colossal Convention

When the R. M. S. Queen Mary docked in New York last week, one of her distinguished passengers was W. T. Morgan, news editor of the London Star. Editor Morgan’s mission was a carefully planned, 48-hour sightseeing tour of New York City. He had planned it carefully so as to omit nothing of interest. If Editor Morgan’s preconception of New York was something between a community playground and an outsized booby-house, he found little to surprise him.

In Manhattan he found that it was not extraordinary for horses to be ridden into hotels; for the air to be filled day and night with loud martial music; for giant firecrackers with sputtering fuses to appear in the streets and in department stores; for substantial visitors from out of town to sleep shoeless in the lobbies of big hotels, or drunken on marble floors. To an Englishman used to trim and efficient bobbies, it was astonishing to see the police of a city famous for its traffic control forced to stand aside while paunchy men in blue uniforms stood at intersections imperiously directing traffic with the obvious and wholly successful purpose of tying it in knots.

Perhaps unfortunately for the world outlook of the readers of the Star, Editor Morgan’s visit to the U. S. coincided in time and place with the 19th annual convention of the American Legion. Unfortunately for the Legion its goings-on in Manhattan promised to spoil the entertainment at many a future convention, for having tied up traffic at Times Square by lying down and shooting craps upon Broadway’s car tracks, what real amusement can Legionnaires hope for from tying up the traffic of less frequented crossroads?

Conventions are an ordinary U. S. phenomenon, to be rated according to 1) size, 2) noise, 3) absurdity. The Legion’s Convention was in not too sober fact an all-time top in all respects. Total attendance, including families of Legionnaires, was 110,000. In six days, the 110,000 reputedly spent $1,300,000 on lodgings, $1,100,000 on food, $1,100,000 on entertainment (chief item, liquor), $1,200,000 in stores, $675,000 on incidentals. Reports that during the uproar in the Astor bar, light-hearted Legionnaires had killed the bartender by bashing in his head with a bottle proved unfounded.

Parade. Slogan of the Legion’s Convention this year was “Up Fifth Avenue Again in 1937” and its members started to live up to it last week on the bright crisp morning of the first day of autumn, 20 years after its members entered the trenches in France. When the parade started, 1,000,000 New Yorkers were lined up along the sidewalks to watch it. Shops along Fifth Avenue, closed for the day, had boarded up their plate-glass show windows. Traffic for blocks on both sides of the city’s central artery was ordered to detour. Some pedestrians who wanted to cross town had to hang to mail trucks.

New York police force units who spent the rest of the day trying to keep order, led off the parade, followed by such distinguished Legionnaires as Herbert Lehman and Fiorello LaGuardia, local Governor and Mayor. The day warmed. Spotters posted down the Avenue from the reviewing stand pulled manifest inebriates out of line before the notables could see them. Hours passed, 100 Army planes droned overhead, the crowds heard 493 bands, saw 800 floats, gasped at a Negro Legionnaire who marched on two padded stumps cut off at the knee and another who kept up with the procession in a wheelchair. Typical sights: Chattanooga’s Drum and Bugle Corps in old khaki trench uniforms, spattered with prefabricated mud; autos disguised as French locomotives and freight cars (“40 hommes, 8 chevaux”) and Paris taxicabs; one-man bands; Alabama’s Governor Bibb Graves with his Wife-Senator Dixie Bibb Graves; 30,000 paraders from Pennsylvania; 1,200 Legionnaires from Kentucky with dried tobacco sheaves; Maine’s Crooner Rudy Vallée (aged 16 in 1917).

All through the evening, while a flock of planes picked out by searchlights swarmed over the city, while the crowds thinned and spectators in evening clothes stood along the curbs, the march went on. Finally, at 2:40 a. m. when the band music had become as much a part of the city voice as the roar of elevated trains, the last Legionnaires turned off the Avenue and the longest parade in U. S. history was over, 17¾ hours after it had begun.

New Commanders. Day after the parade, Legionnaires, thousands of them broke, packed up to go home leaving a handful of delegates to attend to the supposed business of the convention.

American Legion’s total income—about half from annual dues of $1 apiece from its 1,000,000 members—was nearly $2,000,000 for the year ending July 31. Of its expenses a major administrative item is $22,000 a year to the National Commander ($10,000 salary, $12,000 expenses). At least four Legion Commanders have used the post as a springboard to major-league political jobs. Hanford MacNider (1921) and Alvin Owsley (1922) became U. S. Ministers. Paul V. McNutt (1928) became Governor of Indiana, is now High Commissioner to the Philippines. Louis Arthur Johnson (1932) is Assistant Secretary of War.

Last week Woburn, Mass.’s Lawyer Daniel Joseph Doherty, who was a pay clerk in the Norfolk Navy Yard when he got his discharge from the U. S. Navy in 1919 and who so far has held no more important political job than assistant district attorney of Middlesex County was elected on the first ballot. The new job makes Lawyer Doherty a gubernatorial possibility for Massachusetts in 1938.

To preside over the activities of what its 440,000 members pride themselves on as the largest women’s organization in the world, members of the American Legion Auxiliary elected Mrs. Malcolm Douglas, wife of a Washington State Superior Court judge. With her sash and diamond-&-platinum presidential pin, Mrs. Douglas accepted the responsibility of outdistancing her predecessor, Mrs. Oscar W. Hahn of Lincoln, Neb. (who traveled more than 50,000 mi. on the organization’s expense account during her year in office), and set off at once with Legion officials to tour French battlefields and dedicate War memorials. La Société des 40 Hommes et 8 Chevaux is a fun-making Legion by-product whose 37,000 “voyageurs” (members) pay $10 initiation fee, $3 to $5 annual dues, attend to some of the Legion’s serious child welfare work and a large portion of the intensive jollification. Last week, 10,000 40 & 8 voyageurs, with 100 locomotives drawing boxcars, cars that kept tipping over on their back wheels, members disguised as Indians, African savages and Scotsmen on skis, had a separate parade of their own, more disorderly than the main Legion parade. Two days later, as “Chef de Chemin de Fer,” the 40 & 8 chose Fred Fraser, chief of the mail and records division of the Veterans’ Administration in Washington.

Politics. Last week, the Legion heard speeches by Secretary of War Woodring, Governor Lehman, William Green (see col. 3). Commander Colmery’s Dinner for Distinguished Guests was attended by 1,000, including 15 Governors. Herbert Hoover, following Secretary of State Hull as an after-dinner speaker, made a friendly gesture towards old-fashioned Democrats. Said he: “It would be a distinction to anyone, at any time, to follow Secretary of State Mr. Cordell Hull. . . . He holds our confidence and our good wishes . . . . ”

As a political entity, the American Legion’s prime purpose is to get more money for World War veterans. Last week, before leaving for France, Commander Doherty announced that the Legion will make no raids on the national Treasury this year, will modestly confine such activities to “placing . . . the wives of veterans of the World War on the same level as wives of veterans of previous wars in receiving pensions.”