The Story of the American Legion: The Birth of the LegionWheat, George Seay
History
The Story of the American Legion: The Birth of the Legion
Wheat, George Seay
American Legion; World War, 1914-1918 -- Societies, etc.
Harold W. Ross, Calif.
Paris Command, Lt. Col. John Price Jackson
G.H.Q., Bishop Charles H. Brent, N.Y.
1st Army Corps, Lt. Col. Lemuel L. Bolles, Wash.
1st Army Corps, Sgt. Mjr. Race
2d Army Hq., Lt. Col. Burke H. Sinclair, Colo.
The tentative name of this organization was not adopted without a
great deal of discussion. All sorts of titles were suggested to the
committee which considered the matter. Some of them were:
Comrades of the Great War
Veterans of the Great War
Liberty League
Army of the Great War
Legion of the Great War
Great War Legion
The Legion
The American Comrades of the Great War
The Great Legion
The American Legion
The last was tentatively decided upon as the best name although there
was considerable discussion on it. This discussion waxed particularly
warm between a colonel and a corporal and it came to an end only when
some hungry enlisted delegate braved the officer's rising ire to move
an adjournment for lunch. The motion carried immediately and, true to
the understanding made at the outset in regard to rank, the corporal
clicked his heels together, stood at attention and saluted the
colonel, when the latter passed him on the sidewalk exactly five
minutes after he had been telling the colonel precisely what he
thought of him and his opinions--at least as far as the name of the
Veteran's Organization was concerned. I might add that this colonel
was well under thirty-five years of age and that the corporal was only
twenty-one.
And this brings to mind another striking feature of this most unusual
gathering, which was the comparative youth of its membership. For
instance the two individuals who have taken from the beginning the
leading parts in the movement, Bennett Clark, son of Champ Clark and a
Lieutenant Colonel of infantry, and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., son of
the ex-president and also a Colonel of infantry. They are respectively
twenty-nine and thirty-one years of age, and one of the most brilliant
speeches in the caucus was made by a captain of twenty-six.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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