might read it in their leisure hours
returning home. In order to make sure that every soldier and sailor
would have the opportunity to know about the Legion this literature
was again placed on the transports as they arrived in New York harbor.
Various demobilization camps throughout the country were widely
placarded and in each instance the names of the Temporary State
Secretaries were given, and service men were invited to write to the
Secretaries in their particular States. Camp publications, newspapers,
and periodicals published for service men throughout the country were
bountifully supplied with Legion information and scores of them
carried special stories in regard to it. Bulletins and pamphlets were
distributed in hospitals, placed on bulletin boards, and given to the
patients. Every mayor of a town or city with a population above nine
hundred got a letter containing literature about the Legion with a
request that it be given publicity in the local press and then turned
over to the Chairman of the Welcome Home Committee. Certain national
magazines devoted a great deal of space to special articles explaining
the Legion.

Three or four times a week the Foreign Press Bureau of the United
States Government sent stories about the Legion and its activities by
wireless to the ships on sea and to the men of the A.E.F. in
connection with its "Home News Service." In addition to the foregoing,
articles appeared almost daily in the press throughout the entire
country, and by the time the convention was ready to meet those who
ran and cared to read were fully informed that the American Legion was
an organization for veterans of the army, navy, and marine corp; that
it was non-partisan and non-political; that it stood for law and
order, decent living, decent thinking, and true Americanism.

The wide publicity given to the Legion and its aims brought into the
Temporary Committee many amusing letters. Scores of them complained of
the published statement that it was non-partisan and non-political.
"Damn it all, we want it to be political and partisan," one angry
Westerner wrote. Another correspondent insisted that in view of the
fact that sons of Theodore Roosevelt, and Speaker Champ Clark were
interested, the Legion must be bi-partisan and bi-political. But most
of the letters were of a highly commendatory character, expressing the
deepest and widest possible interest. I recall that one of them came
from Junction City, Kansas,