Arizona Representatives Seek Convention of United Spanish War Veterans Here in 1931

AUGUST, 1929 ARIZONA HIGHWAYS Page Eleven Arizona Representatives Seek Convention of United Spanish War Veterans Here in 1931

By R. L. JONES, Commander, Department of Arizona COMMEMORATING the thirty-first anniversary of the War with Spain, the United Spanish War Veterans will hold their National Encampment in Denver, Colorado, from Sept 8 to 11 of this year.

The Arizona representatives will attend in greater number than ever before, for the purpose of extending an invitation to the organization to hold its 1931 National Encampment in Phoenix. If the Encampment can be brought to Phoenix, there will be an influx of some twelve or fifteen thousand men and women, who, in later years, may make their homes in Arizona.

It has not been the custom to hold these meetings in the same section of the country two years in succession. It will probably go to the east in 1930, with Philadelphia as the strongest contender.

New Orleans and Oakland have both announced that they will be after the 1931 gathering and Phoenix may have to give way to one of them. If so, the Arizonans need not be discouraged, for the reason that this state will receive a large amount of favorable advertising and publicity and will be in a position to command more attention to its request for either the 1932 or 1933 encampments.

Arizona holds rather an unique place in the history of the Spanish war. At that time it was a territory with a population not to exceed 115,000. President McKinley's call for volunteers was prorated by the War Department, and volunteers were called for on a basis of population. Arizona's prorata of the call was one battalion, or four companies of a regiment, to be known as the First Infantry, Territorial Volunteers; the other eight companies were to be furnished by New Mexico and Indian Territory.

Arizona promptly filled its quota of this regiment. The appeal of Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt to the young rangemen of Arizona for a regiment of rough-riding frontiersmen was a strong one, and three troops of Rough Riders, known officially as the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, were recruited in Arizona. In addition to these troops furnished in units, the territory, at that particular time and later when the extra volunteer regiments were organized for Philippine service, sent approximately eight hundred more men. The Thirty-fourth United Volunteers was largely recruited from Arizona.

It will thus be seen that Arizona furnished perhaps as large a number of men as any other subdivision of the nation, in proportion to its population. In fact the statement has been made that it furnished the largest proportion of any. At any rate, it is a record of which Arizona may be justly proud.

One contributing cause to the number of men who volunteered from the territory was the fact that the west had largely been settled by people who came from south of the Mason and Dixon line. Many of these men came to the west for a means of livelihood, their farms having been devastated by the ravages of the Civil War and the opportunity for making the bare necessities of life were meagre.

These Confederate veterans had been impressing upon their sons for nearly thirty years, after the first shock of reconstruction days had passed, the double responsibility upon them of showing their loyalty to the Nation. They had also impressed the severe hardships of their own service in a lost cause, and the younger men knew that in the service of the United States they could be sure of better conditions than to which their fathers had been subjected.

When Generals Joe Wheeler and Fitzhugh Lee donned the blue uniforms they received favorable comment from the press of the country, and this served to give an additional incentive to the boys of the south.

If the Spanish War gave no other benefit to the nation, it was well worth its cost for bringing the sons of Union and Confederate soldiers into the Civil and Confederate soldiers into the service of the country. It probably did more to heal the scars of the Civil War than any other event.

The war was soon over for the first volunteers, a great number of them not having an opportunity to get into the actual conflict. These young men returned to their regular walks in life and forgot the incident of their service. The majority of them considered their military service as a matter of civic duty, in about the same catagory as serving on a jury. It seemed more or less of a jaunt in comparison with the four years of inferno through which their fathers had struggled.

The result of this attitude was that service organizations of Spanish War Veterans were more or less of a straggling and local nature. There was an organization known as the National Association Spanish American War Veterans, the National Army and Navy Spanish War Veterans and the Service Men of the Spanish War. In 1904 these organizations were amalgamated into the United Spanish War Veterans. A few years later this was strengthened by the addition of the Society of the Hispano-American War, the Legion of Spanish War Veterans and the Veteran Army of the Philippines.

The united organization did not show any material growth until after the World War. An example of this is shown in the experience of the Arizona men who served at that time. At the close of 1922 there were three. organized camps of thèse veterans, one at Phoenix, one at Globe and one at Flagstaff. Early in 1923 one was organized at Prescott. Four camps gave the state the privilege of organizing a department, and this was done at Prescott in April 1923. It was organized on April 21, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the declaration of the war.

Since that time camps have been organized in Douglas, Bisbee, Tucson, Yuma, Safford and Mesa, and one is in prospect for Ajo. The present active membership is approximately four hundred and seventy, composed of men of an average age of about fifty-five. years. The fact that some of these men have reached positions of honor and trust in the state gives added weight to any organized effort attempted by the organization as a whole. They feel that at this time they have an opportunity to put forth at least one more patriotic demonstration for the good of Arizona.

If, through the agency of a National Encampment, one thousand or more permanent settlers can be prevailed upon to make their home with us and spend their old age in the balmy bene-(Continued on page 19)