AN ACCOUNT OF THE FERSONALTIES, MOTIVES, AND IDEALS OF THE MEN OF THE AMERICAN LEGION, WHO VOLUNTARILY FIGHT FOR THE ALLIES BY GREGORY MASON WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY W. A. STAPLES "Not because our homes are threatened Or our country calls to the fight. F NIFTY young men, brown against the unwrinkled silver carpet of Lake Ontario under the moon, were standing on the abrupt bank of the lake, singing. There was a challenge in their voices, and a sort of religious fervor. They all wore the brown service cap, tan flannel coat, shirt, trousers, and puttees of Canadian soldiers. But they were not Canadians. They were Americans. The song was the hymn of the American Legion. They were a few of the sixteen thousand Americans who have enlisted under the Maple Leaf of Canada since this war began. Why they had left their peaceful homes for a foreign war and an alien quarrel they told you in their songs. After they had sung and resung their hymn and other serious refrains their mood suddenly changed. Without an order and without a commander, by common consent they fell into marching order, four abreast, and, turning their backs on the silver moon and the reflecting lake, swung across the lawn and up a path between the clustered buildings of the Canadian Exposition, lustily chanting their marching song: "There's Tommy, and Mikey, and then Scotty, too, Canadi-an, Australi-an, and the Hindu, English, and Irish, and Scottish, all swank, Turn out, look us over, for we are the Yank." The tune was one from an old Princeton University musical show: the accent and delivery were wholly collegian in vigor. I had come to Canada to find out why Americans by the thousand had enlisted in Canada, until now the Dominion Government had given them their own unit-the American Legion-entirely American. I found their motives in these songs-about fifty per cent the spirit of adventure and about fifty per cent the spirit of crusade. Only, instead of fighting for the recovery of the Holy Land. they are fighting for the recovery of land just as holy and more wrung by the grip of the oppressor than Palestine ever was-Belgium, northern France, Servia, Poland, the Baltic Provinces. Instead of fighting for a concrete and narrow creed and the promised reward of spiritual salvation they are fighting for an abstract idea of justice and the satisfaction of their own consciences. They are fighting, to quote their own recruiting posters, which in every Canadian border town are flaunted in the faces of Americans crossing the line, because they believe that "Germany is the foe of liberty and civilization, and is a menace to the welfare of humanity;" that "Canada is fighting for those very principles of liberty which every true American loves ;" that "the battle-line of Flanders is the bulwark of civilization," and if it were to give way there would be a dangerous probability of " a line of German forts on what is now the peaceful border line between the United States and Canada." Finally, to quote their posters again, "they have put aside nationalism-for this has become more a war of principles than of nations, of good against bad, of right against wrong." So they are going out "To fight for God and justice As they would for the Stars and Stripes." In this discernment of the issues in this war you may or may not agree with them. The point is that they believe these things. Of course, in many of them the spirit of adventure is much stronger than the spirit of crusade; for instance, Captain John V. Frazier, of the 213th Battalion, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, said it was "the call of the wild" that had brought him, a major in the Michigan National Guard, to accept a captaincy in the Legion. But when I suggested that he could satisfy "the call of the wild" as well fighting for Germany as for the Allies, his snorts were amply explanatory. Of course the adventure spirit is a motive with all of them. But so it was with the Crusaders, whom history has granted a halo of glory. In fact, what made the military expeditions to the Holy Land so attractive to the men who dressed in steel was that on those pious but martial junkets they could satisfy both the physical and spiritual sides of their nature. So the American Legion offers satisfaction to both the love of battle and the consciences of its members. Not one of them would be in the Legion had he not a strong feeling for daring and high deeds; but, on the other hand, every man Jack of them would break his sword before he would offer it to Germany. In short, "We're fighting because we want to, Because we love both Fight and Right." It is not inappropriate that the founder of the American Legion should have been a from Sir Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia and Defenses, to found an American Legion. The first entire battalion of Americans, the 97th, sailed from Halifax the other day. The Canadian battalion is the equivalent unit of the American regiment, having slightly more men-about twelve hundred in all. In command of the 97th is Lieutenant-Colonel W. L. Jolly, veteran of the Spanish War, the Boxer Rebellion, and four other campaigns, who dropped a lucrative building business in Philadelphia to strike a blow "For God and Justice "-the motto of the American Legion. Lieutenant-Colonel STAFF OFFICERS OF THE 213TH BATTALION, AMERICAN LEGION Unitarian clergyman, the Rev. Dr. C. Seymour Bullock, now Lieutenant-Colonel Bullock, of the 237th Battalion. Most of the sixteen thousand Americans who have enlisted in Canada are assigned to Canadian units, although there is one entire American company in the 149th Battalion, and the 99th Battalion, called the "International," is mainly composed of Americans from Detroit. Dr. Bullock had been urging the Americans living in Canada to enlist, and he reminded them that in our Civil War forty-eight thousand Canadians fought for the North. They responded so nobly that he got permission Bullock has remained behind to use his magnetic powers in recruiting. He is now in command of the 237th Battalion at Halifax. Up to date the American Legion consists of five battalions, one full-the 97th, which is now in Europe-the others recruiting. These are the 211th, at Vancouver; the 212th, at Winnipeg; the 213th, at Toronto; and the 237th, at Halifax. As this is written, the number of Americans enrolled in the five battalions of the Legion is about three thousand. The term Legion is a flexible one and includes all Americans who enroll in distinctively American units under the Bullock plan. The term is not used in the Canadian army. In that force four battalions make a brigade, and four brigades make a division-a force of about twenty thousand men. The American Legion, therefore, already embraces units which, when full, will constitute a brigade and a quarter. Indeed, the Americans already enrolled in the Military Order of the American Legion are talking about an American division under an American general ! The distinctive thing about the battalions in the Legion, of course, is that they are all American, from the humblest private to the commanding officer. In the American army we have Negro regiments commanded by American officers, but the Canadians have placed all responsibility for the battalions in the Legion on American shoulders, and the Americans believe that they will consent to an American general at the head of a division if enough Yankees turn out to form one. The only qualifications for enrollment in the Legion is that applicants must have good general physical development and good moral character and must be" between eighteen and forty-five, of American birth, parentage, or residence." This lets in a few men with American associations who are actually Canadian citizens, but the majority of the Legionaries are bona fide, legitimate sons of Uncle Sam. The Legionaries are not worrying about THE LEGIONARIES LEARNING HOW TO THROW questions of neutrality or loss of citizenship. Since they offer themselves to the Canadian Government merely as individuals without any official connections with the American Government, and since the Legion does no recruiting in the United States, the neutrality of that country is not affected. As for losing their American citizenship, the officers of the Legion tell me that the courts have already decided in the case of Americans who have returned to the United States after service in France that such conduct did not make them aliens. In taking a special oath to serve King George the recruit to the American Legion is not asked to jeopardize his American citizenship. In his oath he says: "I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to his Majesty King George V, and I will, as in duty bound, honestly and faithfully defend his Majesty in person, crown, and dignity against all enemies, and will observe and obey all orders of his Majesty and of all the generals and officers set over me." Moreover, the recruit declares that he will "serve in the Canadian overseas expeditionary force for the term of one year or during the war now existing between Great Britain and Germany, should that war last longer than one year, and for six months after the termination of that war, provided his Majesty should so long require my services." |