story of my organization
and I would like to have him give it to you." But if Curtin counted on
McDonald to help him he reckoned without his host.

Captain McDonald rose and speaking with great deliberation said:

"I have been an American soldier for thirty years. I was a regular
telegraph officer at the time of the Bolshevik trouble. I established
stations at Seattle and Camp Lewis and this man represents the real
element that we are all working against. Personally he is all right
but he is backing that organization because he wants to represent it.
If he desires to be admitted into the Legion let him get loose from
that outfit and come in by himself."

Captain McDonald's statement was greeted with enthusiasm.

"Are you ready for the question?" demanded the chairman.

The caucus certainly was.

"Those favoring the adoption of the credentials report vote aye," he
cried.

That aye could almost have been heard in Seattle itself.

That aye answered the question of what the American soldier thinks of
Bolshevism or anything tainted with it. That aye answered the lying
statement that our troops abroad had been inoculated with the germ of
the world's greatest mental madness.

That aye marked the distinction between a grouch caused by a
cootie-lined bunk and a desire to place a bomb under the Capitol at
Washington.

I have intimated that the chief aim of each delegate was to see that
no one "put anything over" at this caucus. I think that the only other
determination which might rival that in intensity was most apparent at
the mention of anything that pertained to or bordered on Bolshevism.
This incident of ousting Curtin's organization was not the only
manifestation of it by any means, although it was perhaps the most
striking on the floor of the caucus. But, outside the caucus, in the
hotel lobbies, and in the various committee rooms, whenever the
subject came up these soldier and sailor men, in almost every
instance, got mad--damn mad.

"The trouble with these people who talk Bolshevism is that they don't
know anything about our country," I heard one of them say.

Another quickly interrupted him with, "The big thing the Legion's got
to teach is Americanism and let those crack-brained fools know just
what this country stands for." While still another injected, "The
average 'long-beard' has been so crazed by persecution in Russia that
he would mistake Peacock Alley in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York for
a Siber