have agreed with him in all of his political opinions still he knew
that neither he nor any member of his family would back any
organization or proposition that was not morally sterling.

There were those who did not like the American Legion. There were
those who were willing to let a past political prejudice deter them
from aiding in the most important movement in American life to-day.
There were those who stated that Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., was
prominent in organizing the American Legion for his own political
advancement. The answer to that misapprehension will develop later and
will prove one of the most striking incidents in this story.

Colonel Roosevelt has a peculiarly happy faculty of keeping those who
work with him cheerful and optimistic. He gathered around him, to
launch the movement in America, a set of cheerful, competent
optimists, prominent among whom were Colonel Richard Derby, Colonel
Franklin D'Olier, who figured in the Paris Caucus, Major Cornelius W.
Wickersham, Assistant Chief of Staff of the Twenty-seventh Division,
Captain Henry Fairfield Osborne, Lieutenant Colonel Granville Clark,
Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Kincaide, Lieutenant Colonel Eric Fisher
Wood and Captain H.B. Beers. One of Colonel Roosevelt's first duties
as temporary chairman of the Legion over here was to create the nation
wide organization. He needed committeemen in every State to work the
State organization up, and to start the machinery for the election of
delegates to the St. Louis Caucus, for it had been decided that the
representation in St. Louis must be by duly elected representatives
from congressional districts in so far as that was possible. Each such
district was awarded double its congressional representation, in
addition to the delegates at large. It was no easy task to pick these
committeemen. The decision of the Paris gathering that the