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Show Aljlffi!GA (Copy for This Department Supplied by the American Legion News Service.) CONGRESSMEN FORM BODY Veterans' Association Is Launched by Men Who Served in Various Va-rious Wars. . The old spirit of the A. E. F. and of America's war-time army, navy and marine corps broke out in the halls of the nation's congress in Washington Washing-ton the other day, when veterans of the World war who are members of congress, joined by members who served in the Civil and Spanish-American wars, held a big meeting and a regular feed at the University club and formed "The Veterans' Association Associa-tion of the Sixty-seventh Congress." Two members of the United States senate and 32 members of the house of representatives attended the dinner gathering which resulted In the organization organ-ization of the congressional veterans Into a body. Twenty-six of the members mem-bers of the house of representatives in attendance were veterans of the World war and members of the American Legion. Le-gion. Representative Henry Z. Osborne Os-borne of the Tenth California district, a veteran of the Civil war, acted as toastmaster. He felicitated the country coun-try upon the formation of the American Ameri-can Legion, saying that the "vets of '61" were willing and 1 proud to turn the rein of patriotic endeavor over to the "boys of '17." In addition to choosing Congressman Congress-man Roy G. Fitzgerald of Ohio, president pres-ident of the association, and Congressman Congress-man John E. Rankin of Mississippi as secretary, and getting away with an elaborate course dinner billed in the still familiar doughboy French of "over there," the congressional veterans vet-erans listened to a careful explanation of the legislative program of the American Amer-ican Legion in congress made by John Thomas Taylor, vice chairman of the national legislative committee of the Legion, who was a special guest of honor and the only person present not a member of congress. Mr. Taylor went Into detailed advocacy of the consolidation, vocational training, hospitalization hos-pitalization and emergency officer retirement re-tirement bills proposed by the Legion. |