The CHAIRMAN. We did not invite you to come here lecture the Members of Congress. If you want to discuss your legislation, confine your remarks to it.

Mr. BULL. I am, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Your remarks, Mr. Bull, are not going into this record if you are going to impugn the motives of the members of this committee.

Mr. BULL. I am not impugning the motives of the members of the committee. I am asking you if you have the courage

The CHAIRMAN. It is no business of yours how much courage I have; if you want to talk about your legislative provision, do so; otherwise, close your remarks.

Mr. BULL. I am talking, sir

The CHAIRMAN. Do not argue back with the chairman. I am going to preside over this committee and enforce the rules. You are going to treat this committee and the members of this committee with the propert courtesy in making your statement. Mr. Bull, you are not going to make a statement impugning their motives.

Mr. BULL. You mean I cannot proceed with my statement here? The CHAIRMAN. You cannot proceed if you are going to reflect upon the integrity of the committee and lecture to them about what the duties of Congress are. If you want to discuss legislation, all right. If not, I will have to ask you to take your seat.

Mr. BULL. I am discussing legislation, on the basis of who is going to pay for it and how you are going to pay for it.

The CHAIRMAN. Listen, I do not want to have to call your attention to it any more. If you want to discuss this legislation, all right. But you are not to lecture the members of this committee as to what their duties are or how much courage they have, either the members of this committee or the Members of Congress. Now, confine your remarks to the question.

Mr. BULL. Do you mean to say, sir, I have no right to appear here to ask a question where the money is coming from?

The CHAIRMAN. You are here as an invited guest of this committee. You are here to discuss legislation and not to lecture the members of the committee. And you are not going to do it.

Mr. BULL. I am here as an invited guest, an American citizen, and a World War veteran. I want to know who is going to pay for this bill.

The CHAIRMAN. You can talk about who is going to pay for this bill, but you are not going to lecture the Congressmen and you are not going to talk back to the chairman about it either. Confine your your seat. remarks to the issue or you can take

Mr. BULL. I am confining my remarks to the issue. The issue here

is money.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand. I happened to be away from here last year when you appeared. If you testify before this committee, you must confine your remarks to the issue and not lecture this committee.

Mr. BULL. The issue, in my opinion, the opinion of my association, and the opinion of the American people, is how this tax bill, this compensation bill which we are discussing here, is going to be paid. The CHAIRMAN. That is all right.

Mr. BULL. That is what we would like to know. The CHAIRMAN. That is all right, but you are not going to lecture the members of the committee. You might as well understand that. You go ahead. If you want to discuss this issue, all right.

Mr. BULL. I shall proceed, sir, with my statement. If you see fit to stop me, that will be your ruling there.

The CHAIRMAN. I will strike it from the record if it reflects on the members of the committee or if you attempt to go out of the bounds of proper procedure to lecture the members of the committee. Mr. BULL. No one is attempting to lecture the members of this

committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; you were.

Mr. BULL. Since there is no move to tax directly for these proposed pensions, the only other alternative is to borrow more money. After 7 years of this borrowing it is getting more unpopular every day, as we all well know.

My purpose in coming here, Mr. Rankin, is not to lecture the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. If you want to discuss the bill you can do so. I am not going to call your attention to it any more.

Mr. BULL. There have been introduced veterans' bills here which are all going to cost enormous sums of money.

The CHAIRMAN. There bills were introduced by request and you know and Raymond Moley knows it, and all these other propagandists know it, and you should not come here and pretend that you alone represent the American people and attempt to lecture the committee and cast reflections on it. You might as well understand that. Are you a lawyer?

Mr. BULL. I happen to be.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; also, I am the chairman of this committee. I am going to enforce the rules.

Mr. BULL. What your rules are I do not know. I have no intention of lecturing the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Confine your remarks to the issue.

Mr. BULL. The issue in this pension bill is: How it is going to be paid and who deserves such a pension. We stated to you in our opinion the non-service-connected widows and orphans who were not even born during the World War do not deserve a dime of it, although they are in need. So are millions of other people in needmillions are in need.

The CHAIRMAN. You spoke a moment ago about millions being included who were not here during the World War. Everyone knows that all the bills introduced could not possibly reach millions of people who were not alive during the World War.

Mr. BULL. I will show you figures. There are probably millions of people drawing pensions who were not alive during the Civil War for which they are drawing pensions and the World War group is twice as large.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you a list of the members you represent?
Mr. BULL. Have I a list with me?

The CHAIRMAN. Do you represent one individual?
Mr. BULL. Certainly. I was told the other day-
The CHAIRMAN. Do you represent three individuals?

Mr. BULL. If there was but one, still I would have the right to stand here.

The CHAIRMAN. If you do not represent anybody but yourself, you stand on exactly the same footing as any other veteran of America, and if we invited all the veterans here to read a long diatribe such as that, lecturing the committee and the Congress, we would be here until July and then we could not get through.

Mr. BULL. That is true. I assure you our membership is over three. The CHAIRMAN. Four?

Mr. BULL. Well, if we have four, would we be invited here as an organization?

The CHAIRMAN. If you were really representative of a substantial number, you would. You are invited as a representative of an organization to come here and testify and not to come here and lecture to the committee.

Mr. BULL. How many members would we have to have to be accredited as an organization?

The CHAIRMAN. I do not know. That is for us to pass upon. If you want to discuss the issues here, all right. But if you want to come down here and make a sounding board for a lot of propaganda against Members of Congress who are trying to do justice to the veterans and their dependents, you are in the wrong place.

Mr. BULL. We represent 13,000 World War veterans, and that is darn near a fighting division of fighting men.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you put their names in the record?

Mr. BULL. If I can get them from New York, I will be glad to send you a list of our membership. This is on national defense. May I speak on that, as an ex-soldier.

The CHAIRMAN. We will hear you start.

You understand we do

not handle national defense nor do we levy taxes.

Mr. BULL. I think the chairman himself has stated that the payment of the veterans pensions is a part of national defense. Is that correct or am I mistaken?

The CHAIRMAN. I don't think those were my exact words. We will hear you start, however.

PENSIONS AND NATIONAL DEFENSE

Mr. BULL. One popular conception regarding our participation in a war is that Congress must declare war to involve us in conflict. Some people think that unless our Congress solemnly deliberates and makes a formal declaration we cannot become involved. That is bunk. When another nation moves against us with arms, we are at war, whether we like it or not. The flames of war are spreading rapidly from country to country even as I speak here. Your responsibilities as our Representatives must weigh heavily upon you in times like these, for the flames of war are rapidly spreading from country to country, and even as I speak here there are powerful forces at work which are bringing us closer and closer to the vortex. The press is filled with it every day. You also should know that every dollar which we might be able to raise by every conceivable means may, in the not-far-distant future, be needed to preserve us as a Nation. It is the inescapable fact that if you now plaster a huge pension bill upon this country and pay out these billions to special

classes of undeserving people, you reduce by just that much our ability to defend ourselves. Pension the 4,000,000 veterans of the last war and their dependents and add to them the 10,000,000 to 20,000,000 men we mobilize for the next war and you guarantee chaos and national bankruptcy. If you do that you will have a very practical application of "It can happen here." The responsibility is yours.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, as a matter of fact, there is no bill before the committee to pension all veterans of the World War and none for any veterans of the next war.

Mr. BULL. There soon will be as soon as you get these widows and orphans bills over.

The CHAIRMAN. That is your conjecture.

Mr. BULL. It is not. It is based upon the fact that the country understood that when the bonus was paid that was the end of the demands.

The CHAIRMAN. What part of the country? I never understood it. The committee never understood that we were going to disregard the welfare of the widows and orphans of disabled veterans because they were paid their back pay, the adjusted-service compensation.

Mr. BULL. I received a letter the day before yesterday from the editor of the Louisville Courier Journal. It was his understanding and the understanding of the people of his State.

The CHAIRMAN. He was also opposed to paying the adjusted-service certificates.

Mr. BULL, I do not know.

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, yes; and so was every paper in denouncing and opposing the men who voted against the economy bill. So you are not coming here with anything new by citing the editor of the Courier Journal.

Mr. BULL. May I continue?

Mr. CLAYPOOL. He is dead now; that is, the editor of the Courier Journal.

Mr. VAN ZANDT. Is that not true of all the opposition? They are all dead?

Mr. BULL. May I continue?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. BULL. Granting for the purpose of argument only that we should provide a monthly cash payment for every needy widow and ex-soldier, the precarious condition of the Treasury and the uncertainty of what tomorrow may bring us in the way of involvement in war, must convince any conscientious legislator that, least of all, this is no time to leap into a general pension system for people who not only had no war disability but thousands of whom never knew anything about the war.

In conclusion, it is a profound shock to us-that the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, with all of their fine resolutions about national defense, would, at a time life this, have the crass temerity and brazen effrontery to even suggest that this country cripple itself at a moment when we can least withstand it. As exsoldiers, they should be ashamed of themselves. We are ashamed for them.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you submit that statement for the record? As a matter of fact, is it not true that the very people who are fi

nancing your organization are clamoring now and anxious for us to get into another European war so that they can make more money out of it?

Mr. BULL. The people who are financing our organization are veterans. And Mr. Van Zandt and you helped us to the tune of about $1,500 last year because after my shocking performance before this committee we published the remarks of yourself and Mr. Van Zandt with the questions directed to me and sent them to our members, all our ex-soldiers, and asked them to contribute and they did contribute about $1,500 that I used for postage to editors about what is going on right here.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you give the committee the names of the people that gave the $1,500?

Mr. BULL. I think I can furnish them. They are all soldiers, exsoldiers. And further, if it is of any interest, as to whether I am speaking here for myself, this is a little gadget we had printed of editorials from the North, South, East, and West, which you cannot laugh off because these people are expressing the opinions of the people in their community-The Los Angeles Times, the Minneapolis Tribune, the New York Sun, the Hartford Courant, the New York Times, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and so on.

The CHAIRMAN. The Wall Street Journal is not in there, is it? Mr. BULL. I wish it were.

The CHAIRMAN. Are not these editorials that you refer to there the hand of Esau and the voice of Jacob in that they are all pretty much prepared by the same people?

Mr. BULL. I only got one here this morning. Mr. McCormack of Massachusetts, see if this sounds as if it is canned. This paper is from Pittsfield, Mass., it came in just this morning, I never heard of the paper, or the editor, or the gentleman.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, you can leave that for the committee if you want to submit it. We will see whether or not we want to put it in the record.

Mr. BULL. I would rather not submit this because I do not think it would go into the record. If the very mild remarks which I have made heretofore cannot go in the record, the language the editor or gentleman uses certainly will not make a place in it. Perhaps I think you would rather have this.

It is more in tune with the Veterans of Foreign Wars. It came in from Colgate, Oklahoma Record, in the same mail. They writeThe CHAIRMAN (interposing). That is where the Colgate soapworks are in Oklahoma?

Mr. BULL. It needs soap, if this is a sample of what they are doing. The CHAIRMAN. Some soap men made money out of the war. I noticed the other day that one soap magnate was drawing a salary of $490,000 a year.

Mr. BULL. I think you are premature. I think this is for the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Mr. VAN ZANDT. Just who do you mean when you say you think it is for the Veterans of Foreign Wars?

Mr. BULL. The Veterans of Foreign Wars, Peter Graham, Veterans of Foreign Wars, publicity. They do not have any publicity.

The CHAIRMAN. Any man who signs himself "Publicity" is evidently not the agent of any accredited organization.