Wearers of the Blue

Eighteen hundred and sixty-one That's the year tfe war begun, Slithery-ayrie-eyrie-O! Workin' on the railroad ....

As their voices changed and their beards sprouted, the drummer-boys, cook-shack kids and "powder monkeys"* of the Civil War learned many a song from their grim elders. Now, 62 years after Appomattox Court House, few but drummer boys, cook-shack kids and "powder-monkeys" are left to sing those songs.

Of the 2,128,943 men who fought for the North, only some 47,000 remain alive in the Grand Army of the Republic. Last year the ranks were thinned by 5,963 deaths. At the G. A. R.'s 61st national "encampment, held last week with headquarters in the Hotel Pantlind, Grand Rapids, Mich., only 1,534 felt capable of marching a mile under a sun that reminded some old campaigners of a summer beneath the baking heights of Vicksburg.

Hot, too, was the oratory of delegates from the McLean Post (Reading, Pa.), who resented a movement that is afoot to remove Memorial Day from the official auspices of the G. A. R. and turn it over to the upstart young American Legion. "Let our relations continue this work for us," said the proud veterans, in effect, "until the last of us in gone, and thereafter." (The G. A. R. is well-equipped with auxiliaries in the Sons of Union Veterans, and the Daughters of Union Veterans. There is also a National Woman's Relief Corps.)

Hotter yet was the oratory of retiring Commander-in-Chief Frank A. Walsh of Milwaukee. He accused the National Tribune, a $2-per-annum weekly published in Washington, D. C., of having arrogated unto itself the status of an official G. A. R. organ with the effect of making the G. A. R. responsible for its acts. Such responsibility, stormed Veteran Walsh, the G. A. R. had never assumed and never would assume while the National Tribune continued to fail to account for $23,000 it had allegedly collected from veterans and widows of veterans for lobbying a pension bill through Congress.

Prior to the 61st Encampment, a report was spread abroad that this would be the last year that the time-shattered Army would attempt to close up its ranks and continue its march in good order. Spruce nonagenarians, stalwart octogenarians, limber septuagenarians, jovially scouted such a notion last week. They would march and march, they said, until there were only two men left to march together.

To command them the coming year, the Wearers of the Blue elected Elbridge L. Hawk of Sacramento, Calif., private of Company G, 18th Ohio, and organizer of Company F, 114th Ohio. Short of stature, Commander Hawk has towering energy. Illness prevented his candidacy for commander two years. Last week, they pushed him up on the platform with gentle boisterousness; elected him unanimously.

Resolutons were offered: to ask larger veterans' pensions, to bar the Ku Klux Klan from G. A. R. parades, to hold joint reunions with Confederate veterans. All three proposals were tabled. A resolution was passed asking that pensions for veterans' widows aged 65 or more be raised to $50 per month.

In September the G. A. R. will march in the high, dry air of Denver, Col.

*Messenger boys on battleships. They carried powder to the guns in canvas bags, wore pistols and cutlasses in battle.