Three or four times a week the Foreign Press Bureau of the United States Government sent stories about the Legion and its activities by wireless to the ships on sea and to the men of the A.E.F. in connection with its "Home News Service." In addition to the foregoing, articles appeared almost daily in the press throughout the entire country, and by the time the convention was ready to meet those who ran and cared to read were fully informed that the American Legion was an organization for veterans of the army, navy, and marine corp; that it was non-partisan and non-political; that it stood for law and order, decent living, decent thinking, and true Americanism. The wide publicity given to the Legion and its aims brought into the Temporary Committee many amusing letters. Scores of them complained of the published statement that it was non-partisan and non-political. "Damn it all, we want it to be political and partisan," one angry Westerner wrote. Another correspondent insisted that in view of the fact that sons of Theodore Roosevelt, and Speaker Champ Clark were interested, the Legion must be bi-partisan and bi-political. But most of the letters were of a highly commendatory character, expressing the deepest and widest possible interest. I recall that one of them came from Junction City, Kansas, 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.