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Show m IS TO EE OF SERVICE fheodore Roosevelt Sums Up Principles Princi-ples of Legion Before Cleveland Chamber of Commerce. "We are service men and service women. That is our aim to be of service to this country." With those words Theodore Roosevelt, Roose-velt, son of the late ex-President Roosevelt, summed up his speech on the aims and principles of the American Amer-ican Legion, . delivered before the Chamber of Commerce of Cleveland, r TiiroQ thlTinrc hp flpflnred. were agreed upon in organizing the Legion. They were: That the Legion should be a purely service organization with absolutely no distinction of rank between general gen-eral and private, admiral and gob. That the Legion must be nonpartisan non-partisan and must concern itself with policies, not politics. That there must be no distinction drawn between branches of service, between those who served overseas and those who waited at home. "The American Legion is going to be the biggest stabilizing influence in America, in these disturbed times," he said. He cited a letter from his father, fa-ther, written In 1918, in which the former for-mer president predicted that the danger dan-ger in this country lay in the tendency to swing from extreme to extreme from radicalism to reaction and vice versa. To show that the Legion does not care for politics Mr. Roosevelt pointed out that the first national commander. Colonel Lindsey, was a Democrat "while I," he said, "am suspected of being a Republican." "The United States army," be continued, con-tinued, "was a democratizing influence, influ-ence, contrary to the belief of many." He told of many instances in his regiment regi-ment to show the abolition of class distinction in the service. |