Buddy Fest

In Paris 30,000 beds. In bed 30,000 humans more or less connected with the American Legion. In parched U. S. stomachs sizzling French champagne. All the old familiar folk cries:

"Sock 'im buddy!"

"Saaaay! It didn't take an act of Congress to make me a gentleman."

"So this is Zelli's!"

"Durn purty li'l frog, I'll say."

"Shhtfhh-that, I'll block your knock off!"

"Donnez moi une cigraette, Monsieur?"

"D'ja hear that? It's only the bum ones gets obvious."

"I says to the guy, 'America first!' I says, 'Gimme my ticket! ahead uh these Wops!'':

"Oh the French they are a funny race. Parlay-Vooooo. . . ."

Frenchmen wondered last week, if the National Convention of the American Legion, scheduled at Paris, September 19 to 24, 1927, would turn out to be like this. Legion officers scouted the idea, pointed out that wives, children, fathers, mothers and other relatives of Legionnaires will accompany them with ballasting effect. The 30,000 beds have been contracted for at prices ranging from $1.50 to $7.00 per night, and the steamer passage over will be made in orderly fashion on chartered ships assigned to various states. For example, Legionnaires from Iowa will sail on the Megantic. Meals in Paris, however, will be excepted from arrangement or routine. Over cafe and restaurant tables Legionnaires will make contact again with waiters to whom food is a poem, drink a philosophy and the tip a sum honorably earned --to be demanded, if necessary, as U. S. small businessmen demand payment of small bills.

Parades there will be, also, of course--a gala at the Opera, receptions by committees of French women for Legionnaires' wives, mothers; and for Legionnaires' children, guignol (Punch & Judy).

An earnest of the tribulations soon to beset promoters of the Congress came last week, when Lieutenant Colonel James Porter Fiske of Post No. 1 American Legion gave out an interview: "Legionnaires and their families who come to the Convention should all be inoculated for typhoid before leaving the U. S. . . . Even so they should drink only bottled mineral water in Paris. ... To guard against ptomaine poisoning they should be extremely careful to eat only selected food."

Naturally a party where everyone must first be inoculated and then constantly bear in mind the possibility of ptomaine poisoning is not ideal, or apt to be largely attended. "Colonel Fiske," rapped Edwin W. Thorn, Parisian Legion official, "has made statements both absolutely and profoundly ridiculous, if he has been correctly quoted. . . The public water supply of Paris is one of the purest in the world. . . There is no more need for inoculation, and no more danger of ptomaine poison in Paris than at home."

Seasoned travelers recalled a young U. S. expatriate, one Robert Shaw, who wandered about Europe of recent years, sampling copiously the ordinary city water wherever he went and boasting of this eccentricity to U. S. tourists who were scandalized at his unfailing health. Eventually this young crusader came a cropper in Tunis, where he suffered slight indigestion for some ten days after drinking an entire carafe of city water on the night of his arrival.