returned to their
commands before they received an urgent appeal to help out the
sub-committee of three. They were told to get enlisted delegates to
Paris, never mind how, the method being of small importance provided
the men were there.

CHAPTER II

THE PARIS CAUCUS, MARCH 15-17, 1919

The first delegates began to arrive for the caucus on March 14th.
After-the-war good fellowship between those who had been commissioned
officers on the one hand, and enlisted men on the other, was
foreshadowed in a most interesting and striking manner when they began
to come into the hotels. A dozen or more officer delegates brought
with them as orderlies an equal number of delegates from the ranks.
Thus enlisted personnel, by devious means, were ordered to Paris under
one guise or another. One sergeant came under orders which stated that
he was the bearer of important documents. He carried a despatch case
wadded with waste paper. Another non-com., from a distant S.O.S.
sector, had orders to report to Paris and obtain a supply of rat
poison. Several wagoners, farriers, and buck privates acquired
diseases of so peculiar a character that only Parisian physicians
could treat them. As one of them said, he hadn't had so much fun since
his office-boy days when a grandmother made a convenient demise every
time Mathewson pitched. The expense of the trip was gathered in
diverse ways. In some divisions the officer delegates took up
collections to defray the expense of enlisted delegates.

In numerous instances, enlisted men refused such assistance and took
up their own collections. One amusing story was told by an enlisted
man. He said that the "buddies" in his regiment had deliberately lost
money to him in gambling games when he refused to be a delegate
because he couldn't pay his own expenses. So by various means nearly
two hundred enlisted delegates were in Paris by late afternoon on
March 14th. It must not be imagined from the foregoing that all the
officers arrived on special trains and were themselves in the lap of
luxury. One second lieutenant who attended has since confided that he
sold his safety razor and two five-pound boxes of fudge sent from home
in order to get carfare to Paris.

Practically all of the self-appointed, temporary committee, with the
exception of Colonel Roosevelt, was present. He was Chairman of the
American Committee and had left France for the purpose of organizing
that part of the army and navy which