Don’t forget that the leaders of the movement realized all this, and also remember that they include among their number the enlisted man of the A.E.F. and home army and the sailor in a shore station and on board a destroyer.  The realization may not have been in so many words, but each knew he wanted to “make the world safe for democracy”—­he had fought to do that and had thought out carefully what it meant, that is, that it didn’t mean anything selfish—­and each knew enough of the principle of union and strength to embrace the idea when “organize” first began to be mentioned.

But how to do it, that was the problem.

Then kind Fate in the shape of G.H.Q. came to the rescue with what proved to be the solution.

G.H.Q. didn’t mean to find the solution.  There had been a deal of dissatisfaction with the way certain things were going in the A.E.F. and on February 15, 1919, twenty National Guard and Reserve officers serving in the A.E.F., representing the S.O.S., ten infantry divisions, and several other organizations, were ordered to report in Paris.  The purpose of this gathering was to have these officers confer with certain others of the Regular Army, including the heads of train supply and Intelligence Sections of the General Staff of G.H.Q., in regard to the betterment of conditions and development of contentment in the army in France.

Included in this number were Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., of the First Division, Lieutenant Colonel Franklin D’Olier of the S.O.S., and Lieutenant Colonel Eric Fisher Wood of the 88th Division.  All of these officers have since told me that when they left their divisions they were distinctively permeated with the desire to form a veterans’ organization of some comprehensive kind.  When they got to Paris they immediately went into conference with the other officers on the questions involved in their official trip, details of which do not concern this story.

What is important is the fact that Colonel Roosevelt, Colonel D’Olier, and Colonel Wood each discovered that all of the officers in this representative gathering shared with the thousands of other soldiers of the American forces the hope and desire that the officers and men who were about to return to civilian life, after serving in the great war, whether at home or with the combat units or in the S.O.S., might sooner or later be united into one permanent national organization, similar in certain respects to the Grand Army of the Republic or the United Confederate Veterans and composed of all parties, all creeds, and all ranks, who wished to perpetuate American ideals and the relationship formed while in the military and national service.

When these officers realized what each was thinking they promptly set about with the “let’s go” spirit of the A.E.F. to avail themselves of a God-given opportunity.  A dinner was spread in the Allied Officers’ Club, Rue Faubourg St. Honore, on the night of February 16th and covers were laid for the following: