: \HM ^',^1 v| Wisconsin Magazine of History A WisconsiniU In World War I: Part I EDMUND p. ARPIN, JR. The Bonus March of 1932; The Role of General George Van Horn Moseley JAMES F. and JEAN H. VIVIAN Hoover, the Legion, and the Bonus Army DONALD J. LISIO Proceedings of tfte One Hundred and Twenty-first Annual Meeting Published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin / Vol. 51, No. 1 / Autumn, 1967 THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN LESLIE H. FISHEL, JR., Director Officers THOMAS H. BARLAND, President HERBERT V. KOHLER, Honorary Vice-President JOHN C. GEILFUSS, First Vice-President E. E. HoMSTAD, Treasurer CLIFFORD D. SWANSON, Second Vice-President LESLIE H. FISHEL, JR., Secretary Board of Curators Ex-Ojjicio WARREN P. KNOWLES, Governor of the State MRS. DENA A. SMITH, State Treasurer ROBERT C. ZIMMERMAN, Secretary of State FRED H. HARRINGTON, President of the University MRS. WILLIAM H. L. SMYTHE, President of the If omen's Auxiliary Term Expires, 1968 GEORGE BANTA, JR. MRS. HENRY BALDWIN WILLIAM F. STARK CEDRIC A. VIG Menasha Wisconsin Rapids Pewaukee Rhinelander H. M. BENSTEAD ROBERT B. L. MURPHY MiLO K. SWANTON CLARK WILKINSON Racine Madison Madison Baraboo KENNETH W. HAAGENSEN FREDERIC E. RISSER FREDERICK N. TROWBRIDGE Oconomowoc Madison Green Bay Term Expires, 1969 E. DAVID CRONON MRS. ROBERT E. FRIEND MRS. HOWARD T. GREENE ROBERT L. PIERCE Madison Hartland Genesee Depot Menomonie SCOTT M. CUTLIP ROBERT A. GEHRKE BEN GUTHRIE J. WARD RECTOR Madison Ripon Lac Du Flambeau Milwaukee W. NORMAN FITZGERALD JOHN C. GEILFUSS WARREN D. LEARY, JR. CLIFFORD D. SWANSON Milwaukee Milwaukee Rice Lake Stevens Point Term Expires, 1970 THOMAS H. BARLAND MRS. EDWARD C. JONES HOWARD W. MEAD DONALD C. SLICHTER Eau Claire Fort Atkinson Madison Milwaukee JIM DAN HILL MRS. RAYMOND J. KOLTES FREDERICK L .QLSON DR. LOUIS C. SMITH Middleton Madison Wauwatosa Lancaster E. E. HOMSTAD CHARLES R. MCCALLUM F. HARWOOD ORBISON ROBERT S. ZIGMAN Black River Falls Hubertus Appleton Milwaukee Honorary Honorary Life Members WILLIAM ASHBY MCCLOY, New London, Connecticut PRESTON E. MCNALL, Clearwater, Florida MRS. LITTA BASCOM, Berkeley, California DoHOTiiY L. PARK, Madison BENTON H. WILCOX, Madison Fellows VERNON CARSTENSEN MERLE CURTI ALICE E. SMITH The Women's Auxiliary Officers MRS. WILLIAM H. L. SMYTHE, Milwaukee, President MRS. EDWARD H. RIKKERS, Madison, Vice-President MRS. ALONZO FOWLE, III, Milwaukee, Secretary MRS. MILTON W. FLADER, Kohler, Treasurer MRS. JOSEPH C. GAMROTH, Madison, Ex-Officio VOLUME 51, NUMBER 1 / AUTUMN, 1967 Wisconsin Magazine of History WILLIAM CONVERSE HAYGOOD, Editor WILLIAM C. MARTEN, Associate Editor An Editor's Summer A Wisconsinite in World War I: Reminiscences of Edmund P. Arpin, Jr.: Part One Edited by IRA BERLIN The Bonus March of 1932: The Role of General George Van Horn Moseley 26 JAMES F. and JEAN H. VIVIAN A Blunder Becomes Catastrophe: Hoover, the Legion, and the Bonus Army 37 DONALD J. LISIO Communications 51 Book Reviews 53 Accessions 68 Proceedings of the One Hundred and Twenty-first Annual Business Meeting of the State Historical Society 69 Contributors 106 List of Donors i-xxii Published Quarterly by The State Historical Society of Wisconsin THE WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY is published not assume responsibility for statements made by contribu­ quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, tors. Second-class postage paid at Madison and Stevens 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. Distributed Point, Wis. Copyright 1967 by the State Historical Society to members as part of their dues (Annual membership, of Wisconsin. Paid for in part by the Maria L. and Simeon $5.00; Family membership, $7.00; Contributing, $10; Busi­ Mills Editorial Fund and by the George B. Burrows Fund. ness and Professional, $25 ; Sustaining, $100 or more annual­ Wisconsin newspapers may reprint any article appearing in ly; Patron, $1000 or more annually). Single numbers, $1.25. the WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY providing the Microfilmed copies available through University Microfilms, story carries the following credit line: Reprinted from the 313 North First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Communica­ State Historical Society's Wisconsin Magazine of History for tions should be addressed to the editor. The Society does [insert the season and year which appear on the Magazine], Had I not spent all those hours in close reading, transferring names, dates, and sub­ ject matter to three-by-five cards, I might An Editor's Summer never have known such colorful oddments of state history as these: that one reason Indians despised whites was that whites wore beards, AST January the Board of Curators au­ which the Indians considered unmanly and L thorized the system of occasional, short obscene; that between 1880 and 1885 the Wis­ leaves to allow staff members more concen­ consin Central Railroad maintained an agent trated time for individual research. Your edi­ in Europe whose sole duty was to encourage tor was the grateful recipient of the first such migration to the state; that a Wisconsin In­ leave and spent two of the summer months on dian, Kiala, a Fox chief who offered his life a dual project: the editing of an 1863 diary if the French would quit persecuting his tribe, kept by William Francis Allen while he was was taken from Green Bay to Montreal in a schoolmaster to the newly freed slaves on 1731, sent to Martinique as a slave, and soon St. Helena Island off the South Carolina coast; perished in chains; that Nelson Dewey, the and the preparation of a long-needed com­ state's first governor, and Edward G. Ryan, bined index to the Society's Proceedings for its most fiery lawyer, sitting on the steps of the years 1903 to 1920. a Wall Street bank in 1851, designed the state's second great seal, from which the pres­ Like most members of my generation, I had ent seal is adapted; that tobacco, wool, and encountered Mr. Allen indirectly and not al­ sorghum became important state crops only ways pleasantly a long time ago. He was the after the Civil War cut off supplies of tobacco, Allen of Allen and Greenough's formidable molassess, and cotton from the South; that series of Latin textbooks which used to be standard in high schools and colleges. Another John Stevens, a Neenah miller, by inventing old and indirect acquaintance who showed up in 1874 a roller flour mill for processing hard in the diary was Allen's immediate superior, wheat literally drove wheat raising from Wis­ James Redpath, who later founded the travel­ consin to the Dakotas and Canada where this ing tent chautauquas of glowing childhood preferred wheat grows best; that despite his memory. Allen, a New Englander, was an flamboyant claims to be the Lost Dauphin of amateur linguist and musician as well as a France, Eleazer Williams, in the presence of perceptive writer, and the aspects of the Ne­ witnesses, submitted a written application of groes' culture which fascinated him most were membership to the Green Bay Masons, assert­ their incomprehensible GuUah dialect (actu­ ing that he had been born thirty-two years ally seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Eng­ before in Saulte St. Louis, Canada. The list lish dialects in disguise), and their never-end­ could go on for pages. ing native songs. These he and two colleagues collected and published in 1867— the first The Society has always prided itself on pro­ book of its kind. That same year Allen joined viding adequate aids and keys to its printed the faculty of the University of Wisconsin materials, and this one lapse in an otherwise where he remained until his death in 1889. enviable record has undoubtedly been a frus­ At Wisconsin, Allen was a pioneer in teaching tration to many. In due course the tedium of history through the topical system of study transforming the handwritten entries into and the examination of original sources, prac­ typed pages, the checking and rechecking for tices which substantially influenced one of his accuracy, the final proofing of the galleys will brightest students, Frederick Jackson Turner. be forgotten. Then there will remain only the It is my hope that many others will eventually satisfaction of knowing that an indexical gap have the opportunity to share Allen's experi­ has been closed; that the Society's major peri­ ences through the medium of the printed page. odical and serial publications—from 1855 when the first frail volume of the Collections That was the stimulating part of my two- month leave. The preparation of the Proceed­ appeared until the present day—all stand on ings index was sheer, numbing drudgery, as the shelves properly indexed and waiting to any indexer knows only too well. However, help the searcher find his way among the lost an index is a basic tool, as essential to the hedgerows and forgotten trails leading back­ historian and scholar as a hammer is to a ward into time. carpenter. And even this type of wearisome research can have its compensations. W.C.H. A WISCONSINITE IN WORLD WAR h Reminiscences of Edmund P. Arpin, Jr. {Part I: Initiation) EDITED BY IRA BERLIN Introduction we will never know precisely what crossed the minds of most Americans who went "over TT WAS the war to end all wars, the war to there." Yet if we are to understand the war, -*- make the world safe for democracy. The the experience of the American soldier, and old slogans still echo loudly and produce al­ the effect of the war on twentieth-century most instant identification; yet, fifty years America, it will not be through the study of later, they have a flat and hollow ring. In grandiose military strategy or the wiles of the age of ICBM's and supersonic jets.