McCarty. Warren C. - 1943

American Legion Celebrate
Twenty-Fourth Anniversary Of Anderson Post
There was a splendid attendance Monday evening in the American Legion rooms when John M. Anderson Post, No. 424, American Legion and its splendid Ladies Auxiliary observed the American Legion’s 24th birthday.  Past Commander C. F. Wertz opened the ceremonial session after which Post Commander J. L. Shirey presided and introduced speakers of the evening, the one William Robert Fuoss, war veteran from Tyrone, prominent platform speaker; the other, Warren C. McCarty, Claysburg, 21st district American Legion commander.

Ladies of the Auxiliary served a sumptuous repast of pork and sauer kraut.  District Commander McCarty awarded the post the annual membership honors, Anderson Post having gone over the top in the 1943 membership drive, a signal honor for the Bellwood American Legion.

Past Commander Cramer likewise was awarded the badge of his service, a fine recognition for the retiring commander.  Four young ladies rendered several numbers the session closing with the customary flag salute.  Speakers emphasized the American Legion is ready and eager to admit to membership those of World war No. 2, the national by-laws providing for this admittance after the current global war.  He stressed, too, the accomplishments of the national American Legion over a twenty-four year period, Fuoss emphasized the long, hard, up-hill fight to keep the nation prepared, ready as he pointed out “for those eventualities which did come, those things of which our pacifist friends professed to sense neither fear of nor interest in”.

McCarty spoke intimately of the Legion program of yesterday, today and tomorrow, stressing among other things, ‘we are offering a program designed not alone to win the war but to keep the peace”.  Fuoss, in vigorous manner, appealed for the spirit of tolerance in approaching problems of the post-war world, insisting “it will be well for nations and statesmen to forget revenge this trip if we are to avert an even worse war than the present, the horror of World war No. 3”.

“We will do well to get things in logical sequences”, the Tyrone man said.  “There’s a good slogan for the Legion to follow ‘First Things First’.  It is sheer folly to count chickens before eggs hatch, equally absurd to put the cart ahead of the horse.  We need not worry about the post-war world if we lose this war and that, therefore, is the soundest possible reason for our bending every effort to win it”.

“The American Legion”, McCarty ventured. “is concerned with not alone winning of the war but the perfecting of plans for a just and lasting peace, an honorable peace and that don’t mean ‘peace at any price’.  Those who advocated that for the past twenty some years and apparently did not know they were advocating it, well, they were the ones who helped bring about this current global struggle.  A just peace is one thing, a dishonorable peace quite another”.

“It is of no moment to me”, Fuoss said, “what we name the peace structure of tomorrow.  My principal concern is that it shall be a working, going proposition-a united effort of free nations designed to put an end to this business of killing off each other at periods of from twenty-five to thirty years.  The boys who serve today want a just peace and it must be just if it is to endure.  We are remiss of our duty if we fail to give to them what they want and to a just and enduring peace they are entitled, as are all peoples, here and everywhere in this world”.
~ Bellwood Bulletin, 25-Mar-1943, Page 1, Column 2