another from Old Town, Maine; one from
Delray, Texas, and others from Wolf Creek, Montana, Orlando, Florida,
and Ray's Crossing, Indiana, while a postal card making frantic
inquiries was dated Nome, Alaska, and arrived a week after the caucus
at St. Louis. I have mentioned these towns and localities because they
indicate how widespread and deep is the interest in the Legion. No
matter where a man came from to go into the army, the Legion will go
to him in his home now. Its members will range from fishermen on the
Florida Keys to the mail carriers on the Tanana in Alaska, from the
mill hands of New England to the cotton planters of the Mississippi
delta. All who wore the uniform may enroll just so long as the word
_Americanism_ was inscribed in their hearts between April 6, 1917, and
November 11, 1918.

CHAPTER IV

THE ADVANCE COMMITTEE

When the St. Louisian puffed its way into the big smoke-begrimed
station in Missouri's largest city I looked about me for Bill, who was
going to meet me at the station. We had not met since our prep. school
and college days when Bill had been a thin, wizened little fellow, so
hollow-chested that he had to be sent to Colorado for almost two years
for his health. He came back to school looking better but before his
diploma was handed to him announcing to the world that he was a
full-fledged Bachelor of Arts, he had fallen apparently permanently
into the rut of ill-health. In fact I wondered, when we all sang _Auld
Lang Syne_ in the fraternity house at the close of college, if I'd
ever see Bill again.

From time to time I had heard from him in the years that followed, and
one day in the summer of 1917 he wrote me that he was on the way to
France.

While I gazed up and down the smoke-laden platform, I got a slap on
the shoulder that sent me spinning, and there was the once emaciated
Bill, who seemed to have grown three inches and to have put on
seventy-five pounds.

As we walked toward the taxicab stand I began to realize that instead
of an old friend, a stranger was beside me. True enough, he had the
same name and the same colored eyes, and his hair hadn't changed. But
the rather dreamy eye had cleared, the pale face of old was tanned,
and Bill's chest--the one he had gone to Colorado for--was bulging out
as he carried my two heavy suit cases like a pouter pigeon's at a
poultry show.

What had happened to Bill? The little, quiet, timid youth of the past
was now a big, bu