“Do I understand, Mr. Chairman, that a sergeant at arms has been appointed?” shouted Mr. J.L.  Walsh of the Pennsylvania delegation.

“That’s right,” answered the chairman.

“Then let’s have him get busy,” rejoined Mr. Walsh.  “We didn’t come down here for a vaudeville show or to be entertained by some boob, because we’ve got boobs back home.”

After this remark, the minutes read “Laughter and applause” but that doesn’t half describe it.

Captain Boyce “got busy” and if the minutes could record the result of his actions they would probably read “Order restored—­almost.  Quieter, for a time.”

Colonel Lindsley made a splendid presiding officer.  None could have done better, but as the stenographer who took the minutes remarked (and she was convention-worn because she had attended so many):  “This is the funnest meeting I ever wrote up.”  Right.  It was the funniest meeting—­funny being used in the sense of unusual as the stenographer meant it—­that anyone ever saw.  In fact it was unique; absolutely the only one of its kind.  Because the delegates were unique.  There never was anything like them in all the history of the country.  They had gone into training camps like Bill, very tired, anaemic, with a shop and office pallor; and they came out of the war like Bill,—­new, virile, interested, placing a value on themselves which would have been unthinkable prior to April 6, 1917.

But they placed a greater value on this organization which was so near the heart of all of them.  No better proof of it can be shown than the incident which has just been described, viz., the refusal of Theodore Roosevelt to be the permanent chairman.  Although I do not pretend to be able to explain the processes of thought and reasoning which led Colonel Roosevelt to take the action he did, still I do know this much!  There are very few young men who would have been so deaf to the plaudits of the multitude, to the advice of old friends and to the still small voice of personal ambition as he was in refusing.  I maintain that this refusal was by no means altogether prompted by anything of an hereditary nature but, rather, by the experiences and environment which had been Colonel Roosevelt’s during the war.  It took more than an under-slung jaw and a rugged Rooseveltian determination to refuse this great honor.  It took discipline, and Colonel Roosevelt knew how to inflict that upon himself just as he did upon his troops whenever it was wise and necessary.

In much smaller, but no less important matters, did I see other men practice discipline upon themselves.  I saw men forego the discussion of subjects in which they believed with all their hearts and with all their minds solely for the purpose of doing nothing that would tend to disrupt the Caucus or give the impression throughout the United States that the men who had stuck together so closely in times of daring and danger could not still stick and face, as a band of brothers in the American Legion, any perils or pitfalls which peace might hold for this country.  Therefore, it seems to me that Colonel Roosevelt’s action was more than a manifestation of his own sterling determination to do nothing which might hurt the Legion.  It was archtypical.