The first delegates began to arrive for the caucus on March 14th.  After-the-war good fellowship between those who had been commissioned officers on the one hand, and enlisted men on the other, was foreshadowed in a most interesting and striking manner when they began to come into the hotels.  A dozen or more officer delegates brought with them as orderlies an equal number of delegates from the ranks.  Thus enlisted personnel, by devious means, were ordered to Paris under one guise or another.  One sergeant came under orders which stated that he was the bearer of important documents.  He carried a despatch case wadded with waste paper.  Another non-com., from a distant S.O.S. sector, had orders to report to Paris and obtain a supply of rat poison.  Several wagoners, farriers, and buck privates acquired diseases of so peculiar a character that only Parisian physicians could treat them.  As one of them said, he hadn’t had so much fun since his office-boy days when a grandmother made a convenient demise every time Mathewson pitched.  The expense of the trip was gathered in diverse ways.  In some divisions the officer delegates took up collections to defray the expense of enlisted delegates.

In numerous instances, enlisted men refused such assistance and took up their own collections.  One amusing story was told by an enlisted man.  He said that the “buddies” in his regiment had deliberately lost money to him in gambling games when he refused to be a delegate because he couldn’t pay his own expenses.  So by various means nearly two hundred enlisted delegates were in Paris by late afternoon on March 14th.  It must not be imagined from the foregoing that all the officers arrived on special trains and were themselves in the lap of luxury.  One second lieutenant who attended has since confided that he sold his safety razor and two five-pound boxes of fudge sent from home in order to get carfare to Paris.

Practically all of the self-appointed, temporary committee, with the exception of Colonel Roosevelt, was present.  He was Chairman of the American Committee and had left France for the purpose of organizing that part of the army and navy which did not get abroad or which had returned home.

The Paris caucus convened at the American Club near the Place de la Concorde on the afternoon of March 15th, Colonel Wood presiding.  Lieutenant Colonel Bennett C. Clark of the 88th Division was selected Chairman of the caucus and Lt.  Col.  T.W.  Miller of Pennsylvania, and serving in the 79th Division, was elected Vice-Chairman.  When Colonel Wood called the meeting to order nearly one thousand delegates answered the roll-call and these were of all ranks from private to brigadier general; and every combat division and all sections of the S.O.S., were represented.  Colonel Wood briefly reviewed the self-appointment of the temporary committee during the previous month and outlined the purposes of the caucus.

A few minutes after Colonel Clark had taken the chair an officer of high rank, a colonel to be exact, moved that while in the convention hall, the after-war status as fellow civilians be forecast and that the stations of rank would there cease to exist.  It was agreed that they would be resumed with full force and full discipline as soon as the delegates crossed the threshold of the convention hall and regained the street.