Rarely, indeed, has such a gathering of world famous men occurred as this assembled on the platform of the National Convention of the American Legion at Kansas City in 1921.  Probably never again, will be brought together such a group of the great leaders of the World War.  At this annual convention of America's most powerful veteran organization these men gathered from half a dozen nations to do honor to the United States for her mighty aid in bringing the most tremendous war in history to a victorious conclusion.
   Here is General Jacques, the leader, under King Albert, of the doughty little Belgian army which dared first to throw itself across the path of Germany's invading hosts.  Here is the sagacious General Armando Diaz, who brought the Italian armies back to order and power of the resistance after the disaster of Caporetto in the fall of 1917, and finally, 11 months later, hurled them forth like a thunderbolt and  overwhelmed Austria in the

 most stupendous military disaster of all history, taking more than 300,000 prisoners and 5,000 guns in ten days of fighting.  Here Vice-President Coolidge; Admiral Sir David Beatty; General Pershing, wearing on his breast the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, the highest distinction which France could bestow upon him who in the Republic's darkest hours led America's eager armies to the battlefields where the tide of war was turned to victory for the Allied cause; and here, kindly of face stands Ferdinand Foch, Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the Allies; he whose patient firmness held those vast forces to their  hard task through the terrible spring and early summer of 1918 and whose intuition of genius correctly gauged the moment for the mighty counterstroke and the unceasing hammer blows which followed it until the enemy was brought to abject surrender.