PROCEEDINGS CORN BELT MEAT PRODUCERS' ASSN. 511 



ence I ever had. Did I tell you about going down to the Battle of the 

 Wilderness last year? They had the Marines out on that great Wilder- 

 ness battleground, about fifty or sixty miles southwest of Washington, 

 and they repeated so far as they could some of the maneuvers of one 

 day's battle there. And the president and Mrs. Harding and Secretary 

 Denby and some others were going down to spend the day, going down 

 in the afternoon and spend the next day and see some of those maneu- 

 vers; and the president invited me to ride with him and Mrs. Harding 

 and Secretary Denby and spend the night down there in camp. 



We drove down in the motor car. When we came to the confines of 

 the camp, there was the Marine Band, and we stopped, and there was 

 the flag on the staff — we stopped and the Marine Band played the national 

 anthem and we all stood at salute. Now to get to the headquarters of 

 the camp we had to drive around three sides of a section. We had to 

 drive down, across and up to get to the headquarters; and after the 

 national anthem had been played and the ceremonies there were fin- 

 ished, we drove down that line. It was the most impressive drive in all 

 my life. The entire distance of that three miles was lined with Marines, 

 I should judge about twenty feet apart, just silent figures standing there 

 at salute — not a word said. We drove rather slowly, but I think — I know 

 — I will never to my dying day forget the impression that made on me, 

 that silent row of figures on either side for that three-mile drive, the 

 majesty of the American people represented there in those men as a trib- 

 ute to the head of the nation. 



It was a wonderful night and a wonderful day the next day. We 

 went down to the movies that night. They had movies in a natural 

 amphitheater where all the boys came, and they ran the thing. It was 

 an "at ease" hour. If they didn't like the movie, they said so, or if they 

 wanted to sing they said, "Stop the movies!" and they sang. They ran 

 the thing as they pleased. Just as we were about to disperse, a Catholic 

 chaplain said he would have mass there at 6:30 the next morning. I had 

 a curiosity to see mass in a soldiers' camp. 



It was a chilly morning. We nearly froze in those tents they had 

 there. It was an awfully chilly morning, but I got up and went down at 

 6:30, and the only man there was the chaplain. I waited around a bit 

 and nobody appeared, and I saw up one side of the valley the campfires. 

 So I thought I would stroll up that way. This was about half a mile from 

 headquarters where I was. I strolled up that way and there the boys 

 were gathered around the fires and they were cooking breakfast, and I 

 stopped at one place and they asked me to eat breakfast, and I did — a 

 very good breakfast. I said: "I didn't see many of you down to mass." 

 "No," one of these boys said, "if the Padre had built a fire down there 

 such as we have here, we would have been there all right." 



There are a lot of those interesting experiences there, and there is a 

 lot of hard work. I was saying to Mrs. Wallace the other day that when 

 the time came for us to come back I thought I would stay for two 

 weeks and put in that time in a sight-seeing bus seeing Washington, for 

 I have not seen much of it except back and forth from the house to the 

 office, and really one should just take that much time there to see the 



