Charles LeRoy Lewis - Special Collections - University of Baltimore

LEWIS; 099 1x1 :I r76
peace, and even in the inaugural address on March 4 - No,
sir: it wasn't going to war. And yet, by April 18 they
were in the war.
Harvey: Did the Junior Order of Mechanics oppose entry in-
to the war?
Lewis: Sure, all of them opposed entry into the war - it's
a terrible thing. Why should we get involved in the European
war? We had nothing at stake; that was the Europeans fight-
ing each other. It's true, this country here mast of us
were English speaking people, but there's no reason in the
world that we should lose our . . . our cream of our
crop. Don't forget - your Army wasn't drafted or enlisted
of your men. And you figure you got the cream of your crop
killed in World War T and cone back and those we lost a lot
of the cream of the crop in '41 to '45 - men we had killed
one and another. And then we come back in V iet Name
Today, you could hardly . . . you could hardly get an
Army together to fight.
Harvey: Was the Mechanics a secret organization?
Lewis: We'd call it secret in the fact that they didn't tell
You all the business. You took an oath of
allegiance to them, the same as you'd go into the court and
swear the truth and the whole truth. The same as any organi-
zation, but as far as being secret, or anything subversive
or against the government or anything like thnt,patriotic
organization . . . in other wards, one thing that any organi-
zation you pledge allegiance to the government when you join.