Free It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

Listen! It is the special
request of Senator Windrip that youdo
not
waste the time of this
history-making assembly by any cheering of his name—any cheering
whatever. We of the League of Forgotten Men (yes—and Women!)
don’t want empty acclaim, but a solemn consideration of the
desperate and immediate needs of 60 per cent of the population of
the United States. No cheers—but may Providence guide us in the
most solemn thinking we have ever done!”
    As hefinished, down the center aisle came a private procession.
But this was no parade of thousands. There were only thirty-one
persons in it, and the only banners were three flags and two large
placards.
    Leading it, in old blue uniforms, were two G.A.R. veterans, and
between, arm-in-arm with them, a Confederate in gray. They were
such very little old men, all over ninety, leaning one on anotherand glancing timidly about in the hope that no one would laugh at
them.
    The Confederate carried a Virginia regimental banner, torn as by
shrapnel; and one of the Union veterans lifted high a slashed flag
of the First Minnesota.
    The dutiful applause which the convention had given to the
demonstrations of other candidates had been but rain-patter
compared with the tempest which greeted the threeshaky, shuffling
old men. On the platform the band played, inaudibly, “Dixie,” then
“When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” and, standing on his
chair midway of the auditorium, as a plain member of his state
delegation, Buzz Windrip bowed—bowed—bowed and tried to smile,
while tears started from his eyes and he sobbed helplessly, and the
audience began to sob with him.
    Following the old menwere twelve Legionnaires, wounded in 1918—stumbling on wooden legs, dragging themselves between crutches; one
in a wheel chair, yet so young-looking and gay; and one with a
black mask before what should have been a face. Of these, one
carried an enormous flag, and another a placard demanding: “Our
Starving Families Must Have the Bonus—We Want Only Justice—We
Want Buzz for President.”
    And leadingthem, not wounded, but upright and strong and resolute,
was Major General Hermann Meinecke, United States Army. Not in all
the memory of the older reporters had a soldier on active service
ever appeared as a public political agitator. The press whispered
one to another, “That general’ll get canned, unless Buzz is
elected—then he’d probably be made Duke of Hoboken.”
----
    Following the soldiers wereten men and women, their toes through
their shoes, and wearing rags that were the more pitiful because
they had been washed and rewashed till they had lost all color.
With them tottered four pallid children, their teeth rotted out,
between them just managing to hold up a placard declaring, “We Are
on Relief. We Want to Become Human Beings Again. We Want Buzz!”
    Twenty feet behind came one lonetall man. The delegates had been
craning around to see what would follow the relief victims. When
they did see, they rose, they bellowed, they clapped. For the lone
man—Few of the crowd had seen him in the flesh; all of them had
seen him a hundred times in press pictures, photographed among
litters of books in his study—photographed in conference with
President Roosevelt and Secretary Ickes—photographedshaking hands
with Senator Windrip—photographed before a microphone, his
shrieking mouth a dark open trap and his lean right arm thrown up
in hysterical emphasis; all of them had heard his voice on the
radio till they knew it as they knew the voices of their own
brothers; all of them recognized, coming through the wide main
entrance, at the end of the Windrip parade, the apostle of the
ForgottenMen, Bishop Paul Peter Prang.
    Then the convention cheered Buzz Windrip for four unbroken hours.
----
    In the detailed descriptions of the convention which the news
bureaus sent following the feverish first bulletins, one energetic
Birmingham reporter pretty well proved that the Southern battle
flag