Evening Post. MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 1932. "BONUS" ARMY EVICTED

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 27, 1 August 1932, Page 6

Evening Post. MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 1932. "BONUS" ARMY EVICTED

On the 31st May, a Rip van Winkle who read the headline "B.E.F. at Washington" over an Associated Press message in the American papers might have supposed that the history of 118 years ago was repeating itself. In the year before Waterloo Wellington was able to spare some 2000 of his veterans for service in a British Expeditionary Force on the other side of the Atlantic, and the Chesapeake Squadron sent some 2000 of them in boats up the Patuxent and Potomac Rivers. On 24th August (1814) with absurd ease, says an American historian, this force scattered in swift panic a hasty collection of militia, and entered Washington, sending the President and Cabinet flying into the country. , But oh this occasion the President was not compelled to fly, nor did the challenge to his authority come from a foreign foe. It was not a British Expeditionary Force that was repre-sented-;by the familiar- initials '■8.E.F." It was a Bonus Expeditionary Force composed of American veterans that had invaded the Capitol, and though of them were in uniform it. was making wha,t were ostensibly not military but. political demands. In drab abandoned buildings, as the Washington message above mentioned said; the '. 'Bonus Expeditionary Force, '■' composed of World War veterans from the four corners of the nation, settled down to-day (30th May) to see wliar, Congress will do about their demands for cash payment. As it was cash that this strange Expeditionary Force was after, it was appropriate that the immediate problem presented to the Washington authorities by its arrival to the number of about 1300 was one of finance, as the same report showed:—

Police officials argued over the responsibility .of their care. BrigadierGeneral Pelham D. Glassford, Superintendent of Police, held that' the Federal Government should defray their expenses while here. As, a" result Senator Costigan (D., .Col.) introduced a BUI to appropriate. 75,000- dollars for that,purpose. ... A mass meeting was called to'-nighfin the National Soldiers' H°m. e, to, ia\s°, money. If the District of, Columbia is forced to keep the men Glassford threatens to evacuate them within 48 hours. '

ft would have been greatly to the advantage of all concerned if the district of Columbia had been compelled to keep the men.and General Glassford had carried out his threat! The two days that would havesufficed for the ; purpose have been"'extended to two months at a great cost apparently to the Treasury, and at a : far greater cost to the dignity and the security of the nation. On the 4lkJune the number camped in Washington was estimated at 2100, and the nature of the problems created .by the thousands then on the march to the Capitol was well indicated by a Press Association message of that date: —

To-day 1000 veterans clashed • with the police at Cleveland after an 'effort to secure free transportation. Two hundred and .fifty arrived at Chicago from the Par -East; 200 were halted in a goods train at Blaeksburg, South Carolina; 400 passed through Baltimore and <oO started from New York It is estimated that 18,000 will be. in Washington on 13th June, when, aceorclinoto a petition- circulated ,by. the bonus pro C m eLed: a<lCr3 ''aTOtCOf^C°"g— is The men were described as orderly for the most part, and many of them were lhtunifdrm, but even from the standpoint iof the police, the order was not without its "drawbacks." Ex-soldiers under" strict discipline have been moving upon the railway depots in many cities' demanding free transportation, and rin many cases commandeering ; trains arid locomotives. ihey ; are producing aproblem-in-Wash-ington,rwhere the.demand for food' and shelter is perplexing the police, who tear a possible outbreak of violence. It seems almost incredible that with such ample warning a great nation should have allowed this march upon its Capitol to continue for the obvious purpose of intimidating its Legislature, and that such appalling laxity should have escaped ..the disaster that it-invited. When Mr. George C. Ha^elton, junior, declared in the proud:burst of eloquence with which he opened his book on "The National Capitol" that "to-day all roads lead to Washington" he can hardly have* contemplated their being put to such a use as this. .. In the oia days (he writes) all roads led to Rome: to-day all roads lead to Washington. The eyes of the world are upon her great Capitol; the poor look to it as the bulwark of liberty and prosperity; the rich for protection of vested Tights; the savage for learning' and assistance; the jurist for law; the politician as the goal of his ambition; the statesman for the science of progressive government; the diplomat as the place wherein to play the game of nations; and the sovereigns of Europe in apprehension, for on its' walla is written in blood: "The Divine right of kings is the Divine right of the people." It is the abode of the goddess of Freedom in the New "World. . . ■ The statesman anil the jurist were looking elsewhere for their models during those anxious weeks. -They had very good1 grounds for believing that the goddess of Freedom was safer in the Old World for the time being. . On the 7th June a parade of 7000 members of. the Bonus Expeditionary Army, of which the authorities had been forewarned, resulted in the Government Buildings being strongly

guarded, but the march stopped 200 yards short of the Capitol, and there Avas no clash. On the following day the offer of General Glassford to evacuate them free of charge met with a flat refusal. The attitude of the men is this, said their "eomniander-in-chief," Mr. W. W. Waters. They will disregard the offer of transportation at this time. But if it is made after the Bonus Bill is passed and signed we will gladly accept it. A week later their confidence seemed to,be justified by the result cf the first division on the Bill in Congress. As reported to us on the 16th June: An immediate cash payment of 2,400,000,000 dollars of Soldiers' Bonus certificates, demanded by 20,000 former ser.viee men, bivouacked in Washington, was approved on Wednesday by the Houso of Representatives. The House had passed the Bill by 209 votes to 17,6. But in view of the possibilities in the Senate, the "Commander-in-Chief" of what has been happily called "The Army of No Occupation" prudently drew his lines of investment more closely round the Capitol than before. A large contingent of the "Bonus" Army occupied the steps of the Capitol early on Friday "(17th June) and sent for their camp kitchens with the expressed intention of camping'there while the Senate considered the Bill authorising the full payment of the Soldiers' Bonus. It was a queer sort of "lobby drive" that had to be reinforced in this quasi-military fashion, but the Senate proved less susceptible to coercion than the House, and with the help of a strong lead from Senator Borah, who had declared against paying a cent while the ex-soldiers remained in the Capitol, it rejected the Bill by something better than a three-fourths majority—62 to 18. It must be a long time since the Senate, which has so often worried the President and disappointed the nation, rendered them both so signal a service. President Hoover has now | completed the work that the Senate began. By drastic military and police action he has purged Washington of the thousands of veterans 'who had lingered on to make trouble, and timid politicians are describing the action as "untimely." It was untimely in the sense that it would have been better if taken two months ago,, but was evidently just in the nick of time to 'avert a serious calamity. ~