“I want to say to the members of this delegation,” he said, “that I led the fight against the soldiers’ and sailors’ organization before the Credential Committee, and I want to say to you gentlemen that we didn’t lead a fight personally against this man, but against his organization.’  We know the outfit in our country and we do not want that organization in unless the Americans in it come in as individuals.  I want to say that we are to be organized here on a basis of one hundred per cent, true Americanism.

“I asked Curtin in the presence of the committee if he represented a minority or a majority in his outfit and he admitted that he represented the minority.”

“But we can lick a majority,” Curtin shouted back.  “I want Captain McDonald who had charge of the Intelligence Department at Camp Lewis to say a word on this subject.  He knows the history of my organization and I would like to have him give it to you.”  But if Curtin counted on McDonald to help him he reckoned without his host.

Captain McDonald rose and speaking with great deliberation said: 

“I have been an American soldier for thirty years.  I was a regular telegraph officer at the time of the Bolshevik trouble.  I established stations at Seattle and Camp Lewis and this man represents the real element that we are all working against.  Personally he is all right but he is backing that organization because he wants to represent it.  If he desires to be admitted into the Legion let him get loose from that outfit and come in by himself.”

Captain McDonald’s statement was greeted with enthusiasm.

“Are you ready for the question?” demanded the chairman.

The caucus certainly was.

“Those favoring the adoption of the credentials report vote aye,” he cried.

That aye could almost have been heard in Seattle itself.

That aye answered the question of what the American soldier thinks of Bolshevism or anything tainted with it.  That aye answered the lying statement that our troops abroad had been inoculated with the germ of the world’s greatest mental madness.

That aye marked the distinction between a grouch caused by a cootie-lined bunk and a desire to place a bomb under the Capitol at Washington.

I have intimated that the chief aim of each delegate was to see that no one “put anything over” at this caucus.  I think that the only other determination which might rival that in intensity was most apparent at the mention of anything that pertained to or bordered on Bolshevism.  This incident of ousting Curtin’s organization was not the only manifestation of it by any means, although it was perhaps the most striking on the floor of the caucus.  But, outside the caucus, in the hotel lobbies, and in the various committee rooms, whenever the subject came up these soldier and sailor men, in almost every instance, got mad—­damn mad.

“The trouble with these people who talk Bolshevism is that they don’t know anything about our country,” I heard one of them say.