d recently in St. Louis, the American Legion
unanimously voted down a proposal to seek increased bonus money
for the soldiers.

At that same meeting, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., refused to accept
official leadership of the organization because he desired to
allow no ground for any charge that he wished to utilize it to
further his political career.

Such action by the Legion and by one of its most prominent
members warrant its organizers in working to enroll all the men
who served during the great war.

If this path is followed the American Legion will be a force for
good in the country's affairs as well as a bond of fellowship
among those who were members of the largest army ever raised by
this republic.

_Manchester_ (N. H). _Union_, May 27, 1919.--... In spite of
all that has been written and said it appears there still
remains some mistaken idea and prejudices concerning this
organization. The purposes of the American Legion are:

1. To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of
America.

2. To maintain law and order.

3. To foster and perpetuate a one hundred per cent. Americanism.

4. To preserve the memories and incidents of our association in
the Great War.

5. To inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the
community, state and nation.

6. To combat the autocracy of both the classes and the masses.

7. To make right the master of might.

8. To promote peace and good will on earth.

9. To safeguard and transmit to posterity the principles of
justice, freedom and democracy.

10. To consecrate and sanctify comradeship by devotion to mutual
helpfulness.

This is the program and platform of the wonderful organization
whose potential membership is the four million and more men who
wore their country's uniform in the war.

It is big enough and broad enough to admit every man and woman
who joined the colors. If, as has been intimated, there are some
few ex-service men who think they see in this tremendous
movement something personal and partisan, they should take the
blinders off, forget their unworthy fears, and come out into the
open with their comrades, determined, as every man is who has
already joined, that the American Legion will never be made the
vehicle of personal ambition nor the creature of partis