At Detroit (Concl.)

Detroit last week was privileged to witness a four-day fiesta which rivaled a Eucharistic Congress in size, a Yale-Harvard boat race in the intensity of its merrymaking. More than 100,000 of the American Legion's 1,046,009 members convened nationally for the 13th time. Across the river in Windsor, Canada, government liquor stores were kept open two hours later than usual in the evening. In Detroit, young women dressed in the manner of cinematic French peasantry served doughnuts in a model French village. Mascot gila monsters, rattlesnakes, burros, skunks were displayed all over town. One man had his eye knocked out playing with a trick camera. Three hundred and fifty bands and drum corps spurred on a four-mile parade which took nine hours to pass the reviewing stand. Some 40,000 people paid $3 each to watch the parade from a specially constructed grandstand. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. came all the way from his governorship in Porto Rico to stride by waving his hat and exhibiting a big-toothed grin somewhat like his father's. In sidetracked Pullmans at Windsor. Legionaries were pictured leaning out of windows with bottles of foaming brew in their hands and pointing to what they had scrawled along the car's side: WE WANT BEER. That had become the rallying cry for a large element in the convention after President Hoover had made a flying trip to Detroit to shame the Legion out of asking for immediate payment in full of its adjusted service certificates (TIME, Sept. 28). At Olympia Arena the resolutions committee placed before the 1,415 delegates a measure asking for a submission of the Prohibition question to State referenda. Hitherto the Legion's Dry element has blocked similar measures by raising a point of order, declaring that Prohibition is not the Legion's business. This time National Commander Ralph T. O'Neil from the bone-Dry State of Kansas was prepared. Banging on the Legion's miniature Liberty Bell with his gavel, said he: "Anticipating that question I have asked the [Legion's] National Judge Advocate [Scott W. Lucas] to advise me whether, in his opinion, the introduction of this subject would be in violation of our constitution. He advises that it is not. I agree. "Personally." added Kansan O'Neil, "I believe that there are many much more important matters which should properly occupy our time.'' After the wrangle which followed, a resolution was adopted 1.008-to-394 which attempted to sound impartial, but which read patently Wet: "Whereas the 18th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States has created a condition endangering the respect for law and the security of American institutions, therefore be it "Resolved, That the American Legion in this 13th annual convention assembled favors the submission by Congress of the repeal or modification of the present Prohibition laws to the several States with a request that each State submit this question to the voters thereof."

This action was greeted with the same shout which had followed President Hoover's grave anti-Bonus address: "We want beer. We want beer. WE WANT BEER."

In St. Joseph. Mo., cried indignant Dr. Clarence True Wilson, general secretary of the Methodist Episcopal Board of Temperance. Prohibition & Public Morals: "I am not surprised. If you had seen the outfit that gathered in Detroit as I did, you would be surprised that 394 men could be found who would stand up for the Constitution and decency and sobriety. Where did they get them?

"When these men were being trained for overseas it was as sober soldiers in Dry cantonments. America tried to make total abstainers of every one. They went across to France the cleanest army that ever assembled on any field. A million maintained their American ideals, even in French cities. But some dropped down to another level. This is the crowd that seeks to dominate the Legion and our civilization." The Chicago chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union prayed for "our poor, deluded boys in Detroit. We must pray for them so that God. who works mysterious wonders, may hear. Satan has again cropped out." Henry Leonidas Stevens Jr. of Warsaw, N. C.. newly elected Legion commander, replied: "I have seen fewer drunks at this convention than ever at any other convention."* With him was his smiling wife. New Commander Stevens is 35, went from the University of North Carolina to War as a second lieutenant in a machine-gun unit. He is the youngest leader in Legion history. Like retiring Commander O'Neil, he is a graduate of Harvard Law School. At Warsaw he shoots ducks and quail in the autumn, fishes in the summer, sings in the Episcopal choir, practices law. The Stevens have a small son. Curly-headed Commander Stevens distinguished himself by energetic leadership of his State's department. Elected unanimously, he pledged to help the organization's sick, needy, disabled and orphaned. Although "personally a Dry from a Dry-voting State." Commander Stevens had this to say about Prohibition: "One of the best places to feel the pulse of the people is in a Pullman smoking room. I have yet to sit in on a smoker conversation where the subject did not eventually drift to Prohibition and stay there for a thorough discussion. I believe we should really find out what the American people want. That will end it, one way or another." Before it rushed for trains home, the Legion also voted: to turn its back on the Bonus for the present; to approve the international War debt moratorium; to build the U. S. Navy up to London Treaty size; to oppose disarmament even for purposes of economy; to hold next year's convention at Portland, Ore.

* During the Boston convention last year 358 persons were treated for liquor poisoning; one Legionary and his wife died of this cause. Patients were treated for wounds contracted from being hit by, sitting on, falling on, tripping on, flasks. Massachusetts General Hospital ran out of headache powders.

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