Miami Meet

James Montreal Gordon, a full-blooded Chippewa from Bayfield, Wis., paddled down to Miami in a canoe. The other 1,185 delegates and 50,000 members of the American Legion arrived in the Florida city by train and automobile last week for their 16th annual convention. One-&-all were in a peppery mood. Not only were the Legionaries smarting under President Roosevelt's Roanoke speech week before, in which he urged the organization to cease agitating prepayment of the Bonus and give the nation's destitute first call on the nation's coffers (TIME. Oct. 29), but many of them had just awakened to the fact that even when adjusted service certificates come legally due in 1945 few veterans will get anywhere near as much as they expect.

By the Bonus Act of 1924, the Government assumed obligations to War veterans which now amount to $3,486,000,000 worth of endowment policies payable in full in 20 years. Over President Hoover's veto in 1931, the veterans won the right to borrow up to 50% of the face value of their policies--at 3 1/2% interest per annum. Only 15% of the veterans failed to take advantage of the offer and some $1,689,915,531 was paid out to them as "loans." The Government has made no serious effort to spur beneficiaries into paying their interest, much less anything on the principal. Voluntary repayments total less than $1,380,000. Inevitable result: when John Veteran, who borrowed $500 on his $1,000 certificate in 1931, goes to collect the other $500 in-1945, he will get $188 in cash and a receipted bill for $312 worth of interest.

When this prospect began to dawn on the Legion it took only the spectacle of a Government dispensing billions in the name of Recovery to line up a large mass of its membership in behalf of total remission of interest on all Bonus loans-- a proposition Government actuaries estimate would cost the Treasury an additional billion dollars.

But Legionaries in Miami had their eyes glued not on payment of the rest of their Bonus certificates, without interest, in 1945, but on a full cash settlement in 1934. The Bonus groundswell which set in officially two years ago at the Portland, Ore. convention seemed to reach full tide last week on the silvery shores of Miami. A potent convert to prepayment without "usury" was Hanford MacNider of Iowa, onetime (1921) National Commander, onetime (1925-28) Assistant Secretary of War, onetime (1930-32) Minister to Canada. In Hoover times. Republican MacNider had stoutly battled the Bonuseers but now he owed no political loyalty to the New Deal. However, at the heart of the Bonus agitation lay, as usual, a perfectly good Democrat, Representative Wright Patman of Texas. No. 1 Bonuseer, he was appointed to the sub-committee of nine which sweated to frame the convention's Bonus resolution. Meantime, their fellow-members, on record as resenting the President's remark that they were better off than "the average of any other great group of our citizens," held lavish carnival, with elaborate floats and trick uniforms of every hue, from noon until night along Biscayne Boulevard.

In vain did the sub-committee moderates plead against a further "raid on the Treasury." In vain did American Veterans Association, conservative intramural organization, publish spreads in Miami newspapers warning against "gratuity demands from politically-minded, self-seeking minorities." Not only did the resolution come out of committee for "cash payment at face value," but for "cancellation of interest accrued," and refunding of interest already paid on adjusted service certificates.

Only the delegations from New York, Arizona, Vermont and Hawaii voted solidly against the resolution as it was tumultuously adopted by the convention, 987-to-183.

In Washington, President Roosevelt, like Coolidge and Hoover before him, was all cocked and primed to veto any Bonus legislation a politically-minded Congress might dare to send him.

After such action, the rest of the Legion's business was strictly anticlimax. St. Louis was picked for next year's meeting and a successor to National Commander Edward A. Hayes was named. He was Frank Nicholas Belgrano Jr., 39. of San Francisco. Commander Belgrano is the first Legionary who never got to France with the A. E. F. to reach this topnotch position in the organization. He entered Legion activities when he became a founder of Galileo Post in his hometown. A vice president of Bank of America National Trust & Savings Association, president of Pacific National Fire Insurance Co., Commander Belgrano kept discreet silence when the Bonus ruckus was shrilling about him, pledged a non-political administration.

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