e, everybody had found out the
previous evening that every card in the pack was red, white, and blue,
and that, from the very beginning of the game, an attempt had been
made to keep the knaves out. As a matter of fact, they'd never been
in, but the new Bills who made up the delegations to this caucus were
going to look everybody over mighty carefully before any serious
playing was done.

Suppressed excitement doesn't describe at all the half-hour preceding
the opening of the caucus, because the excitement was not suppressed
in the least. Eager, shining, tanned faces, eyes alert, heads erect,
straight-bodied and straight-talking men one by one took seats which
were assigned to them by delegations.

A flashlight photograph of the gathering was made, but this caucus was
not one that could be pictured by the camera at all accurately. The
outstanding feature of this great get together was the spirit of the
men, and that no camera could catch.

Three large wooden tiers of seats, the kind the circus has under
canvas, were built in a sort of semicircular fashion around the large
stage. The New York delegation occupied one of these tiers; the
Ohioans another, while the third was built for distinguished guests.
If any distinguished guests came they were entirely put out of the
limelight by the audience, for this was one show which was enacted
before the footlights rather than behind them, and, with one or two
exceptions the star performing took place where the spectators usually
sit. In fact, the only spectators that I saw were the newspaper men,
seated at tables within the corral formed by the tiers. All of them
had been in the army or navy or had seen the big show abroad as war
correspondents.

When Theodore Roosevelt, as temporary chairman jammed that gaveled
bit of the rudder of the North Pole ship down hard on the table and
called the meeting to order he got what he had never received while in
the army: that is, direct disobedience. He commanded order, and there
was utter disorder. It was rank insubordination, distinctly requiring
court-martial of everyone present, from a military point of view--but
the American Legion isn't military! And so the delegates howled
joyously. Roosevelt, demanding order at this time, had just about as
much chance of getting it as the Kaiser has of making Prince Joachim
King of the Bronx. Somebody started a cheer, and the crowd didn't stop
yelling for two minutes and a half.

"Young Teddy,"