The American Legion is to be welcomed as an agency for the promotion of the best in our national life.  It will represent, with other things, the majesty of numbers.  A great many men will be eligible to membership; and they will be young, and full of hope and purpose.  And when they act together in matters within the scope of their organization they will represent a force to be reckoned with in the formulating of public policies.

Brooklyn Eagle, April 11, 1919.—­Organization of “The American Legion” is going on rapidily in every State in the Union.  Vast as was the mass of eligibles on which the Grand Army of the Republic could draw after the Civil War, it did not compare with the Legion’s bulk of raw material.  There will be a formal caucus on May 8th, at St. Louis, of a real representative character, in which it is said the enlisted men of the army and navy will have a majority.  Lieutenant Colonel Henry L. Stimson, once Secretary of War, outlines the plan.  He believes that this country’s future hereafter is in the hands of the men below thirty years of age who fought this war.  He trusts that the lesson in practical democracy afforded by military experience and the ideals of democracy emphasized by military enthusiasm may be kept permanently alive.

That this is the main hope of the more active organizers we have no doubt.  Men like Major General O’Ryan, General Charles I. Debevoise, and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and Colonel Robert Bacon would never think of making such a body a lever for pension legislation or an agency of politics.  Yet the temptation to a divergence from the higher ideals is strong, and the rank and file may not be inclined to resist it.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April II, 1919.—...  Such societies, it has been proved, are never partisan.  They are invariably exponents of broad-gauge patriotism.  That they have great political influence in a high national sense is true, but they have never misused it nor ever viewed their mission in a narrow spirit.  They preserve the touch of the elbow throughout life, but only as thorough Americans, devoted first, last, and always to our common country.

St. Louis is proud to be selected as the place for the inauguration of this admirable and undoubtedly perpetual society.  All wars are represented by societies formed by their veterans, and all alike have been truly and broadly patriotic.  It will be the same with the new order, whose membership will, on the strength of numbers called to the colors, far exceed any former parallel.  This event will be a datemark in our patriotic annals and in the progress of the nation.

Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald, April 13, 1919.—­It has been earnestly stated, as might have been expected, that the American Legion will be strictly nonpartisan.  That much might be inferred from the circumstance that one of the leading associates of Roosevelt in