Buffalo Bivouac

During that curious chapter in Occidental imperialism, the Boxer Rebellion, the U. S. dispatched some 2,500 marines and regulars to China to participate in the international loot of Peking. Last week as death and destruction were being visited on China once more a faint echo of China's earlier troubles was heard in Buffalo, N. Y., where the Veterans of Foreign Wars, older brother of the American Legion, was assembled for its 38th encampment. For the first time since the World War the aging veterans who had tramped the plains of northern China found themselves in the V. F. W. spotlight. Their listeners were attentive, their pictures in demand for the convention's timely slogan was: PEACE FOR AMERICA.

Less boisterous than American Legion conventions, the V. F. W. encampment exhibited large groups of greying men, well-chaperoned by their Ladies' Auxiliary, enjoying a few days of comradeship in bar, hotel and auditorium. Last week in Buffalo, the Veterans dispatched their routine agenda in short order. Elected Commander for the coming year was Oklahoma's Scott P. Squyres, a jovial World War veteran professing Indian descent. On the speakers' list with headline peace material were such names as New Jersey's Governor Hoffman, New York's Governor Lehman, New York City's Mayor LaGuardia, Missouri's Senator Bennett Champ Clark, Oklahoma's Senator Josh Lee. Getting in his political oar, Michigan's Senator Vandenberg declared. "It is none of our business, as neutrals, what the effect of our neutrality will be upon anybody but ourselves."

Loudest cheers were reserved for an old V. F. W. favorite, Major General Smedley Butler, U. S. M. C., retired. Boomed the General: "The 1,200 marines now in China are worth 12,000 any other soldiers. Let them get our citizens out and then get the hell out themselves. . . . It's your crowd that's going to do the dying and the bleeding, not the Wall Street bunch of flag wavers."

Lifting chunks from the Vandenberg and Butler speeches the V. F. W. adopted an anti-war resolution, calling for mandatory neutrality, withdrawal of U. S. armed forces from foreign soil. The Veterans also requested President Roosevelt to make public his intentions on the Administration's Far Eastern policy. Just before the convention closed General Butler again took the rostrum, and amid cheers and whistles read a "reply" from the President congratulating them on all their demands, saying: "Other countries must make their damned war without our help." When he finished the General looked up, saying: "It ain't signed. Wouldn't it be fine if we did get such a letter from the President?"

As much as the V. F. W. wants peace, its chief reason for existence, like that of all veteran organizations, is to pump cash from the U. S. Treasury. A politically efficient organization with some 300,000 members, it teamed with the bigger Legion (membership: 1,000,000) to get the Bonus passed. And no one who knows the history of the Grand Army of the Republic, encamped last week in Madison, Wis. with only 200 oldsters to answer the roll call, doubts that pensions for World War veterans wdll follow the Bonus inevitably. For the V. F. W. the campaign opened with instructions for its able Washington Lobbyist, Millard W. Rice, to demand: 1) pensions or public jobs for every World War veteran, and 2) revision of the Social Security Act so that unemployable Foreign War Veterans can start drawing old-age pensions at 50 instead of 65.

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