CHAPTER V

THE ST. LOUIS CAUCUS, MAY 8, 9, AND 10

All during the morning of May 8th that delegation was constantly getting together with this delegation; this leader conferring with that one; was this question going to come up, and what would be done if that question was tabled?  Everybody interested, everybody excited, everybody waiting to see the other fellow’s hand at the show-down, which was scheduled for the Shubert-Jefferson Theater at half-past two o’clock in the afternoon.  Of course, 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.