serving in the A.E.F., representing the S.O.S., ten infantry
divisions, and several other organizations, were ordered to report in
Paris. The purpose of this gathering was to have these officers confer
with certain others of the Regular Army, including the heads of train
supply and Intelligence Sections of the General Staff of G.H.Q., in
regard to the betterment of conditions and development of contentment
in the army in France.

Included in this number were Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt,
Jr., of the First Division, Lieutenant Colonel Franklin D'Olier of the
S.O.S., and Lieutenant Colonel Eric Fisher Wood of the 88th Division.
All of these officers have since told me that when they left their
divisions they were distinctively permeated with the desire to form a
veterans' organization of some comprehensive kind. When they got to
Paris they immediately went into conference with the other officers
on the questions involved in their official trip, details of which do
not concern this story.

What is important is the fact that Colonel Roosevelt, Colonel D'Olier,
and Colonel Wood each discovered that all of the officers in this
representative gathering shared with the thousands of other soldiers
of the American forces the hope and desire that the officers and men
who were about to return to civilian life, after serving in the great
war, whether at home or with the combat units or in the S.O.S., might
sooner or later be united into one permanent national organization,
similar in certain respects to the Grand Army of the Republic or the
United Confederate Veterans and composed of all parties, all creeds,
and all ranks, who wished to perpetuate American ideals and the
relationship formed while in the military and national service.