The Plot  7

Butler to join them and stampede the convention with a speech designed
to oust the “Royal Family” controlling the organization.
 Their dissatisfaction with the leadership of the American Legion did
not find Butler unsympathetic.  He had long been privately critical of the
organization’s close ties with big business and its neglect of the real
interests of the veterans it presumably represented.  These convictions
were to be made dramatically public before the year was out, but now he
declined his visitors’ proposal on the grounds that he had no wish to get
involved in Legion politics and pointed out that, in any event, he had not
been invited to take part in the Legion convention.
 MacGuire revealed that he was chairman of the “distinguished guest
committee” of the Legion, and was on the staff of National Commander
Louis Johnson, a former Secretary of Defense.  At MacGuire’s
suggestion Johnson had included Butler’s name as one of the
distinguished guests to be invited to the Chicago convention.  Johnson
had then taken this list to the White House, MacGuire said, and had
shown it for approval to Louis Howe, Roosevelt’s secretary.  Howe had
crossed Butler’s name off the list, however, saying that the President was
opposed to inviting Butler.  MacGuire did not know the reason, but Bill
Doyle assured Butler that they had devised a plan to have him address the
convention anyhow.
 Butler remained silent.  He was used to oddball visitors who called
with all kinds of weird requests.  Curiosity, and the leisure afforded by
retirement, often led him to hear them out in order to fathom their
motives.
 He thought about his visitors’ finely tailored suits and the chauffeurdriven
Packard an their claim
to represent
the “plain soldiers” of the
Legion.  The story about the rejection of his name on the Legion
convention guest list by the White House struck him as more than
peculiar, in view of the fact that the President had gratefully accepted his
campaign help in a “Republicans for Roosevelt” drive eight months
earlier.  Why should F.D.R. suddenly be so displeased with him?
 It crossed his mind that the purpose of the story, true or false, might
be intended to pique him against the Roosevelt Administration, for some
obscure reason.  Keeping his suspicions