Hot Words & Cool Counsel

La Societe des Quarante et Huit Chevaux is the fun-loving, hot-footing, fanny-pinching, hose-squirting, town-wrecking branch of the American Legion. Commonly known as the 40 & 8 Society, it took its name from the French boxcars used to transport U.S. doughboys to the Western Front in World War I. The boxcars could hold 40 men or eight horses, but the 40 & 8 Society is more exclusive: along with horses, it bars nonwhite men (except for American Indians).

Last week, as the Legion met in Minneapolis for its 41st convention, an attempt was made for the tenth straight year to force the 40 & 8 to accept nonwhites--and for the first time the motion came to a floor vote. Pushing hardest behind it were the Legion's California delegates: the Santa Clara chapter of 40 & 8 had lost its charter after admitting an American of Chinese ancestry. In the 90DEG temperature of Minneapolis Auditorium, the oratory came to a boil. "Those who would introduce bigotry in our organization," cried the Rev. Edward Goodwin, chaplain of the Hawaiian Department, "are bastards of Satan!" But when all the shouting was over, the American Legion voted 1,650 to 1,388 to sustain the 40 & 8 Society in its lily-white stand.

A delegate from California's Whittier Post 51 had better luck. Vice President Richard Nixon, a Navy lieutenant in World War II, was in Minneapolis to explain Nikita Khrushchev's U.S. trip, just as the Legion's leaders were drafting an assault on the visit, including a condemnation of President Eisenhower for issuing the invitation. Weary (40 & 8-playboys near his hotel suite had given him a restless night) and limping (a bump on his knee had turned into a painful case of bursitis), Nixon nonetheless got in his licks. A burst of applause greeted his statement: "It [the Khrushchev trip] could contribute to the chance that we can settle our differences without war, and it is for this reason I believe the visit deserves the approval of the American people."

Senate Democratic Leader Lyndon Johnson, another old Navyman, added his cool counsel to Nixon's, and the mood of the convention changed. The Legion's high command hastily redrafted its resolution. In the final, milder version, there was no criticism of Ike, and the Legion merely "counseled" the U.S. public to be alert, accepting "the Russian Premier's visit with that dignity common only to free men while holding fast to the thought and determination there will be no compromise . . ." After approving the resolution by acclamation, the Legion proceeded to elect its new national chairman: Martin Boswell McKneally, 44, a bachelor lawyer from Newburgh, N.Y. and World War II major.

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