To such Catholics as these all true Americans, whatever their religious beliefs, are bound by ties so indissoluble as to make perfect our fellowship in Americanism. It is to this section of Roman Catholic believers, no matter what their ancestrymay be, that the Klan makes especial appeal for understanding and co-operation.
Catholic Maryland won for herself the high distinction of being among the three colonies which permitted and protected religious freedom. So we can acclaim the Catholic colonists as among the very first to realize the full meaning of Americanism, not only as to the outward things of government, but also as to the inner things of the human soul. It should not be forgotten, too, that these same advocates of political liberty and freedom of conscience were themselves grossly offended and injured for a time in their own colony by a period of Protestant oppression. American history is a strange, strange story. To understand our America of the present, and her problems, we must look deep into the records of the past. With an unbiased mind we must set ourselves to seek out the truth.
In the State of Maryland one still finds in remote hamlets the original Catholicedifices, with their sacred symbols, gracing the countryside. Wherever we find such an American Catholic church, the American public school is seen in the immediate vicinity. When the American Catholic in Maryland, or in any other state, goes to the ballot-box, he votes as an American citizen, not being under ecclesiastical control. We members of the Ku Klux Klan, positively insist upon making this distinction among Catholics. We ask, and who can say that we ask too much, that our whole Catholic population bring its American citizenship up to these high standards set by the original American Catholics. When this is done, we shall surely find the greatest pleasure in rendering to the Catholic Church that full measure of esteem which shall be its due.
During the past two generations great submerging waves of European immigrants have rolled in upon us. One wave brought with it loyalty to the German Kaiser and treason to America. Another wave threatened to smother our working people with the noxious poison of Bolshevism. Still another sought to make a bitter animosity toward England and the British Empire the main-spring of all its political and social activities in America. Is there anything remarkable, anything inexplicable, about the fact that millions of illiterate peasants from the more backward parts of Europe, if they happen to be Roman Catholics, should continue among us their backward European methods? The peasantry of Poland were, until the Great War, practically a serf population. Why deny the most evident facts? They are still, in general, verminous and insanitary, illiterate and stupid. The theory that they can quickly be made into Americans is the thought of a fool. The view that their church can conduct itself like the American Catholic church in Maryland is equally ridiculous.
This immigrant element has been misused in two ways. Its clergy has kept it ignorant of America by keeping its childrenout of our public schools; and it has been used in our elections as a mass vote by those who exercise control over its votes through the political power of the church.
With reference to the public schools our American position is as simple as it can possibly be. Having established the public-school system as the veritable cornerstone of the nation's democracy, we request, in the most brotherly spirit, all our immigrant peoples to give it whole-hearted support. We invite their children to sit beside our own children and receive the education needed to insure their good citizenship, their self-support, and their self-respect. And then there are those who say that we of the Klan hate the immigrant and seek to deny him his rights!
These immigrant children, sitting side by side in the same school, will be received as guests in one another's homes. They will form those deep and lasting friendships which will make for true social unity. Whenwe open our arms and our hearts to receive them and to give them all we have, it is they who reject us. They deny themselves the best gift we can possibly offer—a free public education. How often are we Americans made unhappy—sometimes, I fear, a bit displeased—when we see on one side of the street a beautiful, spacious and sanitary public-school building, and on the other side of the street a poorly constructed, insanitary and overcrowded parochial school. Our own children go to the public school. The immigrant children go to the parochial school. Our own children are taught by teachers carefully selected and trained for their service. In the overcrowded and insanitary parochial school the teaching is usually of a standard incomparably lower; often it is unworthy to be called education. Has the world ever presented a more curious and perplexing problem than we have here? We see American citizens of property and influence anxious to tax themselves in order to present to the child of the Sicilian, Hungarian, or Polish peasant thebest common-school education in all the world. And then we see, to our unutterable amazement, this peasant serf, or city wastrel, misled by his clergy, rejecting the only worthy means we have of making Americans out of his children. To an average American this whole situation is both perplexing and distressing.
As regards the use of the Catholic vote in elections, the facts, while startling enough, are more easily understood. In 1917, to mention a single instance, all the country watched the Catholic church of New York City defeat one of its own distinguished members, Mr. Mitchell, for Mayor. No informed person longer seeks to deny the political influence of the Catholic church. Very recently Archbishop Hayes, of New York, personally directed the New York police to break up a public meeting called in the Town Hall by American citizens. The police appeared before the meeting began and actually went so far as to prevent its beginning. The law could not havebeen violated because no chance was given to violate the law. Archbishop Hayes simply decided that he would not permit this meeting, which had nothing whatever to do with any church or religious issue. So he ordered the doors of the building which had been hired for the purpose to be locked and the crowd driven away by the police. All we can say to our Catholic fellow citizens is just this: DO NOT FORCE US TO RESIST YOU. If you take direct control of the police power out of the hands of the duly constituted officers of government, then we, as Americans, must eventually resist your police power in defense of our liberty. Gifted with an infinite desire for peace and with great patience, we shall wait until we do not dare to wait longer. Meanwhile we plead with you daily: Do but accept the basic principles of our Americanism and all arguments, all unpleasantness, will vanish in a single hour.
In a democracy the separation of church and state implies much more than theabolition of state support of the church. Separation of church and state must mean with us that the individual citizen shall permit neither the state to interfere with his religious worship nor the church to interfere with his duties as a citizen. Only a developed political mind can understand the nature of this very modern duality of attitude. The outward separation is, after all, largely a form of law. The inward separation, the state of mind, is the true source of the freedom both of the church and the state. When the individual walks into his church he must enter with his body and his mind free to worship according to the dictates of his conscience. When he enters the voting-booth, when he enters the court-room, when he opens his mouth to mix his thoughts with his fellow citizens as regards things political, mind and mouth and hand must be free from the control of the church.
To understand our problem fully we must never forget the platitude that our immigrant people are not Americans. Theyare Europeans. Immigrant Catholics are European Catholics. In almost every country of Continental Europe there is a Catholic party. The Catholic political party of Germany, of France, of Italy, of Belgium, of Austria, or of Hungary, seeks to win the elections and control the government outright. Again, to repeat myself, is there anything strange about the fact that when these immigrants form themselves into enormous foreign communities in our great cities or industrial districts they should act here just as they act in Europe? I do not think so. It is all simple enough. Its outward effects, at least, are as easily understood as a Mississippi flood or a San Francisco earthquake. We must either put an end to this thing or this thing will put an end to our democracy. We can not have a Hungarian, a Polish, an Italian, or an Irish peasant Catholic party among us and still preserve the political system of our American nation which has been created by three centuries of democratic evolution. A political system run by sectarian ecclesiastics and anAnglo-Saxon bill of rights can not live on the same soil. In these things there can be no compromise. To surrender an inch is to surrender all and yield to the executioner.
As regards this whole matter, our American humility and false modesty has already worked us great harm. These matters must at last be dragged into the open and publicly discussed. Hence this exceedingly plain statement. If some of our citizens wish their children to attend parochial schools, then we want those parochial schools properly inspected. We would like to know what textbooks are being used. The public ought to know just how much education, and what manner of education, the fourteen-year old immigrant boy or girl is possessed of when he leaves school. What does this boy or girl know about himself? How much reading and writing and arithmetic has he laid hold of? What has he learned of American history and American institutions? We Americans of all sections confess, not without shame, thatwe have not as yet done nearly enough for public education. But the means we have provided we wish to have used; the standards we have set, none too high, we wish to have regarded; and what we are seeking to do for the immigrant we would like to have fully appreciated.
We seek for all our more recent immigrant peoples such a blending with our people as shall find in religion and the church no hindrance to Americanism. We expect, that, more and more, we shall be united by the lasting bonds of a common patriotism, a common morality, and common social ideals. We crave the development among us of such a Catholic church as will not make intermarriage with those of other faiths impossible or difficult. To throw such a chasm between our young people as is never bridged by the marriage tie would be a lasting curse to our country. Let us seek by every means to make all Christians ready for that more perfect unity of the entire Christian church which should ever be an ideal with all of us.
The reader will find repeated again in this book, until it perhaps wearies him, a certain expression. This statement represents something which I have made fundamental in all my thinking. We Americans must approach this and similar tasks in a spirit of the utmost fellowship and gentleness. Our every act must partake of kindliness and consideration. We expect to find, side by side with us in this matter, the American part of the Catholic church. Together we shall work out the problem and then forget it. This difficulty is, after all, but a passing phase of our complex social process. In a generation it will have been left behind us. The difficulties, even the tragedies, of one century often furnishes amusement to the historians of the next. So let us, in this thing, take thought of the morrow, too. May the execution of the policy we have declared be everywhere so inwrought with honorable motive and worthy purpose that presently none shall have the slightest cause to be against us or deny to us that fellowship and affection we seek to win from every American.
CHAPTER VII
The Terminology of The Klan
Diligentinquiries have been made into the peculiar terminology used by the Klan to designate its purposes and mission. Why is the word "Imperial" employed to characterize the chief officers of the organization? Why is the organization designated as an "Invisible Empire"? Does the Klan contemplate, perhaps, a nation-wide organization that at the height of its strength means revolution and the overthrow of our present republican form of government? These and other similar questions—some intelligent, others less so—are being asked by both the enemies and the friends of the Klan.
The words "Imperial" and "Empire" find no friendly place in the vocabulary of a democracy. Whenever used they are connected with autocratic government and centralized power. These terms, as usuallyemployed, are in sharp contrast to the principles of our great American democracy. We have everywhere and always held that imperialism is a despicable thing, a survival of despotic power that came up from the caveman and was exercised always by force. Germany and Russia were the last great exponents in Europe of this imperialistic idea of forcible conquest. Nothing has been more revolting in America than the suggestion of centralized power by which a nation was to be governed and directed. Even the temporary expedient of taking the Philippine Islands into our keeping, as a necessary sequence to the war with Spain, and holding them under military rule until the people could be developed into approximate democracy and govern themselves, found strenuous opponents. During all the twenty years that we have maintained the mandate, it has caused dissatisfaction among the nations.
The Imperial Symbol of the Klan
We of the South know only too well what the reign of the bayonet means. Thetragedy of American history was the untimely death of Lincoln. Had he lived the story of the Reconstruction would have been different, very different. Following the "deep damnation of his taking off," the white race of the South was subjected to the supremest test to which Anglo-Saxon worth was ever put in the history of the world. The test did not result from the defeat of the Confederacy, or in the devastation of the states over which the armies fought, or in the appalling loss of life during the four sanguinary years. It was in the Reconstruction period, when the armed forces of the victorious North occupied the entire Southland and secured to the Negro a lordship over Anglo-Saxon democracy, refinement and civilization. The mute anguish of those years can not be put into any form of speech. But let me speak no word of blame. My people of the South hate every form of coercive government as they love the freedom of our great democracy. There is to us one symbol expressing the deepest loyalty of the Klan, elevated even above theFiery Cross. It is the American flag. To the Klan it is the emblem of human liberty and security, guaranteed to every citizen of the land and signalled to all the world beyond our borders. So jealous is the Klan of the American flag that it is unwilling to share its place with the flag of any other nation. We are unwilling even that the colors of the nations to whom we are bound by ties of both blood and gratitude shall in this country mingle their colors with the American flag. We desire no confusion in the minds of American people as they look upon the emblematic flags of different nations as to that place of supremacy in our loyal devotion which we hold for the American flag alone.
But at the same time the Klan renounces no obligations or responsibilities to the rest of the world. We believe that the world is moving toward "That one far-off divine event," "the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world," but even when this greater fraternalism of the world is consummated, we should not be willing for our colors to be commingled with those of other nations. The emblem that symbolizes our sacrifices and our victories, our failures and our triumphs, and out of which our common democracy has come, must have in our hearts no lesser place, or even an equal place, with those of other nations. With us the place of our flag is not below, or along-side, the flags of other peoples. It must be kept apart and above.
We are ready to interpose our will and our strength to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak anywhere. We are ready out of our abundance to distribute charity to the unfortunate to the uttermost ends of the earth, without respect to race, color or clime. We are quite prepared to promote a great democratic evangelism to the oppressed and downtrodden peoples of all the earth, that they too may become conscious, through democracy, of human worth, and achieve something of the freedom which we enjoy. Yet everywhere we shall serve under our own colors. All the nations of the earth shall continue their separate existence and work out their destiny under the emblems into which have been spun and woven the distinctive characteristics of their race and their country. All this has been relentlessly brought home to us through the resurgence of the nations during and after the Great War. Nothing but absolute independence would satisfy the Poles. Ireland must be free or perish in revolutionary effort. The smaller the people, the greater its effort to prove its right to national independence, its capacity for a separate government. With these facts in mind it would seem superfluous for native-born Americans to explain or defend our spirit of patriotism and nationalism.
The phrase "Invisible Empire" means that the Ku Klux Klan undertakes to establish and maintain a nation-wide organization in the thought of our people. It plans a conquest only in the realm of theinvisible where men do their thinking. The mentality of the American people is to be awakened, stimulated, and directed. It means the sovereignty of Americanism, of the democratic idea, in every American mind. We plan no system of coercion or outside pressure by which the American people are to be forced into this "Invisible Empire." I may modestly, and not irreverently, say that the idea underlying the establishment of the Klan and its principles in America was taken from one of the leaders in the early Christian Church, who said that the propagation of Christianity was without force, noise, or violence, without army or treasury, but that the Great Leader had established an everlasting kingdom by taking captive the thoughts of men. So the Klan holds that anything constructed by force may be destroyed by a superior force. Anything impressed upon unwilling subjects by outside effort may be rejected and thrown off in the springtime of returning power. Anything and everything that is established by such exercise of force ismarked and destined for decay and return to the dust. But that which is once established in the deeper thought, from the spiritual need, of mankind is indestructible because there is no manner of force that can lay hold of it. Alexander said, "Philip, my father, gave me life, but Aristotle taught me to think." It is not the blood of Philip, through Alexander, that pulses in the arteries of the world's civilization of to-day; but it is rather the thought of Aristotle, which, despite all the Alexanders of history, runs through the story of the world's civilization in all the lands and all the centuries. It is the idea possessing the spirit which vitalizes all our basic institutions and movements toward human freedom which animate the noblest endeavors of human life. It is in the thought of the American people that the Ku Klux Klan undertakes to establish its "Invisible Empire," mighty in its ultimate consummations, indestructible and glorious forever.
CHAPTER VIII
Symbolism of The Klan
Muchado has been made about the strange symbolism of the Klan. I stated at the beginning that the regalia now in use by the organization, like the terminology, was selected as a memorial to the original Ku Klux Klan. It has been generally regarded as grotesque and ghostly, designed to intimidate and terrify persons against whom the displeasure of the Klan might be directed. But the only purpose in adopting the white robes and incidental trimmings was to keep in grateful remembrance the intrepid men who preserved Anglo-Saxon supremacy in the South during the perilous period of Reconstruction.
The regalia of the Klan, however, expresses something more in the present organization than a mere memorial. Its symbols convey to the initiated the highest sense of patriotism, chivalry and fraternalism. Thesesymbols were designed by myself during the years that I pondered a revival of the old order, and contemplated the endangered position of the native-born American throughout our commonwealth. Every line, every angle, every emblem spells out to a Klansman his duty, honor, responsibility and obligation to his fellow men and to civilization. None of it was wrought for mere ornamentation, and none of it designed as mere mysticism. All of it was woven into the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan for the purpose of teaching by symbolism the very best things in our national life.
Emblematic robes are not uncommon to organizations of men banded together for either religious or fraternal purposes. My affiliations with the church and my connection with a number of fraternal orders have convinced me that the impelling truths which grapple and hold the loyalties and convictions of men are taught better by symbolism than ritualism. The Roman Catholic church proclaims the authority ofits mission to the world through the insignia of its clergy and its rulers; while its service of sacrifice and sanctity, of separation and consecration, is expressed in the robes of its nuns and its celebrants. In that colossal pile, St. Peter's at Rome, the most splendid edifice of Christianity in all the world, is to be found a vast collection of stones and gold, an array of art so magnificent that it dazzles even the imagination, an amazing accumulation of trophies torn by conquest from pagan temples—all symbolizing the universal dominion of the church not only over all things material but also over all things religious. The robes of the cathedral are elaborate and impressive throughout all the grades and ranks of service, from the drab garb of the keeper of the portals to the flashing parti-colored uniforms of the Swiss guard, and on through the white, red, and black trappings of the attendants in the inner courts to the vivid scarlet of the cardinals and the gorgeous purple of the pope. All are designed to express somefunction, or mission, or doctrine of the church in its vast system of evangelism.
The Anglican church of Great Britain and the Protestant Episcopal church of America, as well as various other Protestant organizations have found it to be impressive and inspiring for the clergy and the sisterhood to wear robes designed to mark them as men and women set apart for service to humanity. Perhaps the Greek Catholic Church has the most elaborate system of teaching great religious truths by symbolism of any other religious organization. It undertakes to convey to the world the idea of its virility as a Christian organization by an extensive and artistically wrought out symbolism in its robes and insignia.
It goes without saying that nearly all, or perhaps all, of the great fraternal organizations of the world are characterized by the robes they wear. There are different robes of different orders and various robes for the same order in different degrees. Thesecarry the message of fraternalism in the garments that are worn. Why should we, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, be singled out and condemned for adopting a symbolism altogether unique, to represent our particular service to the age in which we live?
Some objections, probably not wholly misdirected, have been made to the mask that is worn by the Klan in public parades and demonstrations. The objections would have all the more force if it were true that the membership of the Klan were concealed from public scrutiny; but this is not true. Every local Klan has the custody of its roster and the roster may be given to the public at the option of the local Klan. Besides, it is overlooked that the Ku Klux Klan is a chartered organization—in fact twice chartered under the laws of Georgia.
Its membership is subject to the scrutiny of the State at its will. In addition to all this, the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan in respective communities are well-known, responsible and representative men, and their connection with the Klan is generally known to the community at large. So influential and conspicuous are those men that their leadership is a guarantee of the worthy and orderly purposes of the Klan. However, the matter of removing the mask from the Klan whenever it appears in public is under consideration, and it is not improbable that the Klan will be authorized to remove the mask whenever a public demonstration is given.
Outrages and atrocities, expressing various forms of prejudice and hate, have broken out in some parts of the country during the past twelve months. Often they have been charged to the Ku Klux Klan. It is the same old story repeating itself. During Reconstruction days crimes were perpetrated by men wearing regalia similar to that of the Ku Klux Klan. The government spent much time and money investigating these crimes, and compiled altogether forty-six volumes in reports, butwherever the perpetrators of an outrage against order and decency were uncovered, they were found to be not Klansmen but Scalawags and Carpet-Baggers who had used regalia like that of the Klan under which they might enact their dual purpose of committing a crime and blackening the reputation of the Klan. At the recent investigation in Washington numerous crimes were charged to the present-day order of the Ku Klux. These had been heralded in startling stories by the press throughout the land. I vigorously denied that a single crime had ever been committed by the authority of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. I repeat that it is not an order that can tolerate or condone disorder, violence or lawlessness. It pledges itself now and always, here and everywhere, to the protection of society under constituted authority. It holds itself in readiness to serve the best interests of society, not despite the law, but always under the law and through the law.
Symbolism teaches the great principles of life, and being, and destiny, better than any form of speech. There is in human nature an element of mysticism that responds to suggestion and intimation when no logic or philosophy could reach it. The mightiest movements in our human nature, those which transform the character and transfigure the spirit, have their seat in a realm deeper than where man does his thinking or even his willing. It is in that part of human nature where the loyalties and affections, the prejudices and the passions are kept, and it is only the mystical, the mysterious, the intangible that can reach these forces in human nature, arouse them, and put them into action. It is poetry and art and music that move and stir the best that is in us and make us conscious of what we may do and be. It is not strange then that symbolism has been used by the church in order to stimulate reverence and devotion; that it has been used by lodges to awaken fraternalism and humanism; and that it has been used by every great patriotic organization to arouse passion for native land and freedom. Indeed, every cause that has ever lived and flourished in the world, whether religious, fraternal, or patriotic, has been highly spiritualized and all the fiery forces of the inner man have been elicited and organized in its service. There must be in every real movement something of the fervor of the Crusaders. Without this every spiritual effort of man, whether great or small, has had its ardor grow cold and the bright light of its enthusiasm go out in darkness.
What, indeed, could be more appealing to the finer things in human nature than the fiery cross? "By that symbol we conquer." It carries the idea of illumination and sacrifice. It symbolizes a love that lights the way to the noblest service; it symbolizes a service that is impelled by a burning love. Here lies the only way forward. The world's amelioration is proclaimed by the glowing cross. We sometimes think of the cross as remote, as belonging to the past, asan isolated event. The cross is now and here, and it is an essential part in the advancement of the world's civilization. It means, in the highest sense, freedom—the freedom of all mankind. But there is no emancipation in all the world that comes as a gratuity. Wherever human life is freed a ransom price must be paid. When it comes to the liberation of human thought and the breaking of chains from immortal souls, there is no ransom that will pay the price except that into which men mint their lives, and out of which they coin their higher selves. All this and more the fiery cross of the Ku Klux Klan conveys to the Klansman. It means the supreme agony of love through the sacrifice of life, to the end that freedom and democracy may be secured to all mankind forever.
Stone Mountain—The Klan Rendezvous
CHAPTER IX
The Rendezvous
Oncea year, to be exact, on the sixth day of May, the Klan from all over the country makes a pilgrimage to Stone Mountain. Men from every walk and station in life leave their daily pursuits and journey to the Klonvocation. They come from the pulpit, the schoolroom, the market, the bank, the mine, the factory, the shop, the farm, and from high offices of public trust and authority, and meet at this unique rendezvous. Stone Mountain is sixteen miles south of Atlanta. The place of assembly is not without interest. It is a huge boulder compacted into solid granite and thrown up, ages ago, by some terrific convulsion. The stone is three miles in circumference and something more than a mile in altitude by the trail leading to its summit. Its frowning and forbidding front is scant of foliage. Soil which the winds have brought and deposited in its crevices and on its craggy sideshas no deepness. Adventurous shrubs and trees that have sprung up from time to time have been beaten back by sun and storm because they had no anchorage in the earth. To this mountain boulder of solid granite the Klan resorts for comradeship and consecration. The pilgrimage is not unlike that conjectured by a noble and worthy order which takes its initiates to the far East, travels them through the unmarked desert, over blistering sands, and under a sky of brass, while the breath of the winds is like that of a furnace, scorching the weary pilgrims as step by step they fight on to the Mecca. The Klansmen make their way along the poorly defined and jagged trail of Stone Mountain, climbing upward, always upward, every step taken requiring a step higher, until, among the elderly members, the last ounce of fortitude and endurance is expended in the ascent to the top. There on the bald crest, far above the insistent clamor and demands of daily life men are alone with each other and in the presence of the infinite. It has sometimesseemed to us to be a place where two eternities met, the past giving its solemn command to the men so isolated and elevated, and the future beckoning them on to still further achievement. First, there comes a sense of tranquillity. The men look out upon the peace and harmony of the stars and seem to feel in their souls something of the strength and orderliness of the planets in their courses. Then comes, during our preliminary ceremonies, a moment of marvelous moral tension and exhilaration. The vast throng, with upturned faces, deeply moved to eloquent agony of speechless prayer, catches a glorious inspiration. It comes upon the multitude as a wind moving gently through the forests in the autumn time. Every soul is thrilled. In this conscious moment each man feels as if he were in a holy temple consecrating all that he is and all that he has to a great cause. In response to his dedication, new and secret divine forces begin to stir in his consciousness. I have looked upon the whole assembly of strong men, a few of whom hadjeopardized life unto death on the fields of war in the Sixties, and a larger number of younger men who had just carried themselves like demigods in the fierce fighting in France, and I have seen the tears rush unbidden from their eyes and trickle down their cheeks, while here and there a sob that could not be controlled shook the frame of a man unafraid of either life or death. It is the time and place where all pettiness and meanness is submerged and washed out by the great surge of the profoundest sense of human worth. It is a moment in which all hates and animosities and prejudices die and in which love and sacrifice and altruism are reborn. It is a time in which all that is coarse and unchaste and unrefined in human life is consumed by a holy passion, and all that is noble and courteous and divine is made regnant.
In the execution of such ceremonies, the Klan evidences its practical nature and its concrete knowledge. Americans can not be aroused by the mere citation of facts. Ourminds are stuffed unto bursting with facts. We want action. And we do not propose to wait a generation as has been so often the case, and then weep because it is too late to act. We seek to draw the souls of men into a service which means sacrifice. This service is vital to the nation, and essential to the salvation of our civilization. The language of symbolism is the language of the soul.
The Klan disperses, goes back to mingle with men, to meet all the stresses and the exigencies of life. But in each man there is a light that never before fell on sea or shore, that will lie upon the task that he is set to do, and, however hard and menial it may be, will transform that work into a beatitude. More than this: We have daily evidence that this light, in honor, kindness and charity, falls upon our fellow men along the pathway that they and we walk together. Surely there can be no hidden dangers in the assembling of men under such conditions, impelled by such motives, capable of such inspiration.
If we undertake to build or maintain a civilization in which the moral and social idealisms of men are not mixed with the mortar in the structure, we shall most surely build for decline and decay. But if Americanism becomes a holy cause in which the souls of men are enlisted, in which service of our country and our country's service of the world is made first and foremost, then we shall build an empire indestructible; because, mingled with the cruder material there will be the elements that are everlasting. In such workmanship alone can there be security for those American institutions which we seek to save by the consecration of all we have and all we are.
CHAPTER X
Democracy as a Social System is on Trial
Ina preceding chapter I stated that we Americans are barely reproducing our numbers on our own soil. In comparison with the colored and foreign elements our percentage is every year being reduced. In full view, within a few decades at most, lies the new America. Perhaps it has been fear of giving offense to others, more likely it has been pure carelessness and individual selfishness on our part, which has prevented us from discussing our country of to-morrow. The new America, if the present tendencies continue, will be a nation composed of a majority of American white farmers only in the middle western and plains states. Black farmers will ultimately predominate throughout the coastal regions of the South and the Mississippi Delta, and Japanese farmers will rapidly multiply their numbers on the Pacific coast. But the ever-increasing city population already numbers over half the nation. This city population in the North and East contains to-day about fifteen per cent. of original Americans. Presently this diminishing element will count only a few capitalists and professional persons. The majority of the business class, even, will be composed of Greeks, Jews, Germans, Italians and their descendants. The great working class of the cities is even now composed of two elements. First, there are the skilled workers, mainly British, Irish, Germans, and Scandinavians, with their immediate descendants. The unskilled working people of the cities, always tending to submerge the skilled, are composed of Italians, Negroes, Slavs, Jews, French-Canadians, and thirty-odd other elements from the south and east of Europe and from Asia. Recently seventy-two Americans, members of a literary club, in a small industrial town in New York, took a census of their children. They discovered, much to their surprise that altogether they were rearing exactly fourteen offspring. Meanwhile fourteen children is not an uncommon number at all for an Italian or French-Canadian couple to add to the citizenship of our country.
Questions arise here which it is quite necessary for us to answer at once. Why, indeed, do we Americans lay such great store by our peculiar racial heritage? Are not our recent immigrants, taken as a whole, as "good" as we? If we do not desire to bring children into the world, should not our country be left to others who are willing to undertake the responsibilities of parenthood? Hence, why are we not disposed to accept our dissolution silently and go to the grave with a smile?
The answer to these questions is implied in the title of this article. It is the cherished belief of the members of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan that democracy—democracy in all its aspects, the social spirit of democracy, the practice of democracy, the regeneration of the soul of mankind throughdemocracy—that this is the greatest of all values created by modern civilization. We hold further that the part played by the American people in the evolution of democracy has been of primary importance. Despite all our mistakes, and they have been many, we have succeeded. And our success, even with its limitations, has been, we fully believe, as a light and as a leading to all the world. It was our glorious privilege to unlock the prison door of France when our sister republic was first created in the French Revolution. It was largely the success of universal, white, male suffrage in America which impelled our brethren of the British Empire to undertake the same colossal experiment. No doubt our history has been the subject of far too much fervid eloquence and vain boasting. We have not often hesitated to tell all the world about ourselves. Here I am seeking merely to state the simple facts, because without them the standpoint and argument of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan could not be understood.
Among the most false of theories which sane minds ever gave themselves over to believing, has been that which claims that the democratic system, if only put on trial, will work among any people at any time. Indeed, many persons otherwise well informed still accept this folly. They believe that democracy is a sort of "universal truth." All that we must do is to preach it to all mankind as a sort of saving gospel. All the heathen need do is to accept it, believe it, and forthwith practice it. Oh, vanity of vanities! It has been three hundred years since the English Bill of Rights was signed by King James First and nearly one hundred and fifty years since our American Declaration of Independence. And now the Great War has ended with our seeking to ram democracy down the throats of nations which do not want it. What blows in the face our optimism receives from the simplest facts of history! One hundred and thirty years ago the French revolutionists attempted to pull down every throne in Europe and plant democracy in every land.And then only seven years ago the hosts of the Kaiser made their plunge toward Paris in order to destroy the French Republic and establish absolutism and kultur in its place.
No! The practice of democracy does not spread around the world as rapidly as we can tell people how nice it is and how much we like it ourselves. Democracy has been a slow, delicate and perishable growth among a specific group of Europeans. These peoples have been much favored through a peculiar heritage. No doubt, ages ago, it took the ancestors of man a long, long time to stand upright. Some quadrupeds seem to have tried but never could learn the new method, so they still amble along half the time on all fours. So to-day it seems to take a considerable period for the masses to learn how to rule themselves successfully. Yet we ought not to be utterly discouraged. If the facts indicate that some peoples can never learn, that is no reason at all why we should surrender our own learning and growth inorder to be equal again with the weaker brethren.
Democracy is on trial. It is on trial in America just as much as anywhere else. It is being weighed and revalued before the whole world. We have seen many a European people after being overurged to accept a republican form of government, again returning to autocracy. The Greek majority which recently voted to bring back the Kaiser's ally, King Constantine, and the Kaiser's sister, the Queen, was rather staggering in its size. If a vast majority of the Greeks in their home country joyously accept monarchy and Hohenzollernism, how can we expect our Greek immigrants here in the United States to enthuse over our republican institutions? They come, like others, as everybody knows, to avail themselves of the opportunity to advance their material interests. This has been true with the majority of our immigrants for over fifty years. Who, indeed, can blame them for taking advantage of economic conditions in America? Indeed, these immigrants of every sort and kind are well within their rights. If some of them seem to make too much money out of us, is it not because some of our employing class first urged their coming in order to make money out of them? We brought them in because we thought they would be cheap and profitable to us. Some of them have proved in the long run to be very dear and unprofitable.
Let me here make a general observation regarding the attitude of my colleagues and myself in connection with this whole matter of immigration. Where, in these chapters, mention is made of any particular race or group of immigrants, not the slightest offense is intended. But too often our squeamish fear of giving offense to the over-sensitive has prevented our discussing this most crucial of our national problems. Everyone feels free to-day to discuss Russia, to investigate Russia, to come to conclusions with reference to what is being done inRussia, and to make suggestions as to a Russian policy. Why, then, we ask in the name of all common sense, should it be an offense to anyone to discuss the millions of Russians who live in the United States? How do they make a living, and what is their percentage of national increase? Are they or are they not desirable immigrants? The same holds good of the Germans, the Irish, and of every other racial element which is increasing among us. All this is interesting to us and greatly important. It is interesting and important in more ways than one. What the immigrants may and should demand, what the Negro or the Japanese are quite right in demanding of us, is that we as native-born, white Americans should discuss these questions of population in a way that is at once honorable and kindly. We must stick to the facts. We may indulge neither in slander nor in base insinuation. Those of our immigrant population who have been received into citizenship may ask especial consideration. We, of the Klan, on our part propose to bring facts insupport of a policy. There may be those who wish to disagree with us publicly. If so, we shall expect to be asked to consider only facts brought in rebuttal. As man to man, marshalling fact for fact, let us sit down together and seek to sift this matter to the bottom.
The Emperor Addressing First Imperial Klonvokation.
CHAPTER XI
Our Cities a Menace to Democracy
Referringagain to the menace of the American city to American institutions, I desire to remind the reader of the thought of some of our most profound thinkers on the great problems of democracy. Some of these views expressed at different periods of our history were prophetic, and some of them were conclusions, as though the visions of the seers were being fulfilled. In the early days of the republic when there were no great cities in our country and when the tide of immigration had just begun to flow to our shores and settle in the growing centers along the Atlantic seaboard, Mr. Jefferson said, "The American city is a cancer on the body politic." He seemed to foresee, at the very beginning of the republic, the deadly poison of anti-democracy generated among the alien people congested in our cities. In 1866 Wendell Phillips, a powerful advocateof emancipation, said, after the great conflict was ended and the Negroes free, "The time is coming when the American city will strain the government as slavery never did." He, too, foresaw the virus which the city would spread to the entire nation, attacking and consuming the great principles of democracy upon which the republic was founded. In recent years, Lord Bryce, Ambassador of Great Britain to the United States, after years of study and careful investigation, wrote that classic entitled "The American Commonwealth." In this work there was much commendation of American institutions, but the book was not without candid criticism. He said that "the conspicuous failure of American democracy is in its great cities." The clear meaning of the eminent Englishman was that the American people remained really democratic only in the rural sections and the villages. Already conglomerate population from every clime and shore had destroyed democracy in our congested centers. Only recently Mr. H.G. Wells, one of the most conspicuous, progressive thinkers in the world, looked upon New York with its seething millions, heard its Babel of languages, felt its delirious fever, and then calmly announced that Petrograd in its rust and desolation was a picture of New York in the future. In our greatest city, this profound student of social and political life saw unmistakable evidence of the real and seething madness of Bolshevism which meant the overthrow and the utter collapse of all things democratic.
We are told to-day (1920) that millions of workers in our great cities are unemployed. I reflect at once upon the figures which are placed before us. In round numbers we have, this winter, about six millions of unnaturalized foreign working people living in our cities, and almost exactly the same number of employed on our hands. What would they have us do? Are six millions more to come to us and thus give us a total of twelve millions of unemployed? What would these people all do for a living? Thereare simply not enough jobs in the cities for them, and it seems evident that there will not be in our generation. It is these masses, which, by sheer force of number, gave us the present insoluble problem of the city. Our cities can maintain their large populations only if the country population is increased to supply them food and raw materials on the one hand, and with markets on the other.
Overgrown cities are in themselves a menace. When the surplus is composed of unassimilated and unemployed aliens the menace is doubled,—nay, it is multiplied tenfold. The great city as at present constructed and conducted corrodes the very soul of our American life. Factory work, with every new invention of automatic machinery, progressively selects those who are more and more unfit to be Americans. A factory manager in Chicago recently amended a new rule for the selection of employees. He would hire no blondes. The big blonde people, he said, "would not stayat their machines until the whistle blew." He was evidently hunting for a people who could be trained never to move a foot, or an eye, for ten hours a day. The growth of an American is ordinarily impossible under the conditions of either great wealth or great poverty. The city simply can not furnish the character-building elements which must needs go into the making of an American. Every American child should be born to a vast heritage. This heritage should include a fine healthy parentage, clean birth, gentle care, proper nourishment and opportunity for play and education in the open country.
Is there no cause for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan among the robust, native-born folk of the countryside? Is not the menace of the city to our ideals and institutions an urgent demand for the organization of our unspoiled rural life to save the nation from infection by the great cities?
It may be that we are too late in starting this movement of "America for Americans and Americans for America." No doubt it should have been begun thirty years ago. But if we can find some method by which, after ten years of entire rejection, immigration can be narrowly and rigidly restricted, and by which the surplus population can be distributed over the vast, uncultivated area of our great country, and slowly wrought into our social life, there is yet a hope left for our country. But if alien populations are permitted, as in the past, to flood our land, colonize in our great cities, and propagate their kind with such amazing rapidity, while only native-born Americans continue to till the soil and propagate their kind in an appallingly decreasing ratio, then our country is lost and everything the fathers strove to build for posterity will sooner or later be wiped out. We do not in the least seek to hide the fact that the Ku Klux Klan is making a last stand for America as the home of Americans and Americanism.
CHAPTER XII
The Failure of Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe
Tothe average country-born American the period of the war has been a time of painful disillusionment. There may have been among us some who, before the war, had some accurate knowledge of what was going on in the world; but the great mass of Americans were very much shocked by the succeeding event. We took the statements of the leaders of the people in Germany and Russia at their face value. It seems to me to be very much worth while, at present, to trace the various events by which we were led into knowing what central and eastern Europe were really thinking and doing. Let us recall our first period of disappointment. We had always believed that the parties of the people in Germany, especially the great social-democratic party, had the power to prevent the Kaiser from undertaking a war of conquest.The declaration of war was to be the signal for a revolution and the creation of a republic. This was rather taken for granted, without investigation, by reading people all over the world. When we saw the entire German nation, with hardly an exception, turn quite insane with the war spirit, we sat back and wondered what this people was really like.
It was also a generally accepted theory among us that the German immigrants who came to us had left Germany because they disliked the tyranny of its government. Then, in 1914, with a suddenness that quite took our breath away, came the propaganda of "Kultur." The entire German nation, through every means it had of speaking to the outside world, informed us blandly that it possessed a system of society infinitely more efficient and desirable than democracy. "It is Germany's duty under God," wrote Bernhardi, "to give her superior culture (Kultur) to all inferior peoples." Indeed, the war itself was generally interpreted by Germans as an act of charity and self-sacrifice upon their part. At the time the idea was so new to us that it took us just three years to really comprehend what was going on in Europe. Even President Wilson, in 1916, declared publicly that we did not know the real causes of the War.
We may or may not have completely destroyed the Germany autocracy; but we may be sure we have by no means done with the system of Kultur. It is all too easily put into practice. The stupendous machinery and organizations of modern industry presents a perfect maze of social problems for solution. Kultur is, by far, the easiest way out. The direction of the whole business of life is simply turned over to a "great man" or to a small clique. People everywhere are naturally lazy and morally irresponsible. For the thinking and characterful minority there come times of mental anguish and disillusionment. To-day the times tempt us to despair. We are almost driven to lose faith in the majority and soin government by the majority. "Why not try a change," "it could not be worse;" we hear it said on every hand. So, perhaps, we in America may yet try Kultur. Certainly we shall if we again have unrestricted immigration. When democracy fails, some form of monarchy will be our only salvation from oligarchy; and an oligarchy is more dangerous to freedom than monarchy. A monarchy, with our peculiar industrial development and our great propertyless masses, means Kultur.
In the midst of the Great War came the Russian revolution. We sat back and said, "How fine! Now they are going to follow our example by building a great Russian Republic, which will soon break down the German autocracy." Even now most of us do not begin to understand what has really happened. What we do know is that the Bolshevists have not only created a state of universal starvation, disease, and despair throughout Russia, but they have also tried to spread their system throughoutEurope and the world. To this end they have made foreign war and conducted an enormous and costly world propaganda. As I write we learn that, while we were voting credits and collecting funds for the starving in Russia, they were paying $30,000 to a single agent to execute a single murderous bomb-plot in New York City.
In our last chapter we quoted Mr. H. G. Wells's statement that New York City will be the next Petrograd. This observation can be, by no means, taken jocularly. Go in our present course, and Bolshevism will be, in all our larger cities and industrial districts, the natural alternative for monarchy. Compelled to choose between the two, our original American people will probably divide and civil war will result. Lenine and Trotsky did not create Bolshevism. Bolshevism grew as naturally as a rank weed on a dunghill. It sprang from ignorance and poverty and despair. It will appear wherever ignorance, poverty and despair are mixed together. Quite likely we shallhave, with unrestricted immigration, a Bolshevist revolution first, then monarchy and Kultur.
A great many persons are disposed to compare the present state of central and eastern Europe with the conditions in France at the time of the French Revolution. I, for one, am not at all impressed by this easy explanation. The French Revolutionists represented and advocated a movement toward democracy for all Europe. Both the Germans and Russians have burst out upon us shouting that, in their peculiar system of tyranny and slavery, they had something better than democracy to proffer us. The average reading American throws up his hands and cries, "What in Heaven's name, will China next urge upon us, or Africa?"
What has happened to us is, after all, upon reflection, quite simple. We are placed on the defensive for democracy. And we have wisely given over trying to urgeour point of view and our peculiar system upon those who not only reject it but openly despise it. No doubt this has been a severe shock to our ancient national conceit. Let me again emphasize that democracy seems to be, for the present, limited to the boundaries of certain peculiar nations. Other peoples may evolve into democracy later. But their steps will be slow. Their experience will be gained gradually. We can not help them much, if at all, by urging them merely to follow our example. Meanwhile, if there be anything precious in democracy for us, we had better bestir ourselves to save what we have left of it.
CHAPTER XIII
Foreign Outposts in the United States
Fourdistinct national elements in the United States showed, in lesser or greater part, disloyalty and pro-Germanism during the War. These were the Germans, the Jewish Bolsheviki, the Sinn-Feiners, and the French-Canadians. Of course these four were no different from most other foreign-speaking elements. Only their standpoints and loyalties were clearly brought out by the war—that was all. Italian or Portuguese, Greek or Slav, in case their home country had been lined up against the United States, would have acted in just the same way.
Here we must touch upon a fact which is pretty widely known or taken for granted. There is a fundamental difference between this later immigration and that of the middle portion of the nineteenth century. The Germans, Hungarians, and Italians of 1848-70, for instance, came to America for the same reason as most of the original British and Irish. They were seeking freedom and democracy. Their purposes were idealistic. They sought in the new country not only economic opportunity but political liberty which were denied them in the old. They were Americans at heart before they left their old home.
The new immigration is totally different. This later swarm has come mostly to get jobs and money. Among them, no doubt, there are a few who are gifted with qualities of mind and character which make this description inapplicable. I am referring to the many, not the few. In Southern and Eastern Europe they form the lowest grade of the working class and include a large percentage of beggars and peddlers, of thieves and criminals. The average immigrant of this sort has been accustomed to a condition of poverty unknown to, and almost unimaginable to, the average American. His physical standards of living aresuch as to make his competition with the original American worker unfair and deadly. Great masses of them have come without the slightest intention of remaining with us and adopting American standards. Herded together under the most unsanitary conditions, hoarding up their wages with a greed incomprehensible to an American, crowds of them rush back to the country of their origin as soon as their savings are sufficient for their purposes. Meanwhile they are replaced by others until the standards of living of the American-born wage-earners are hopelessly undermined. Each immigrant who comes to us under these conditions prevents the founding of an American home and the birth of American children. Let us hasten to add that their coming and going can not in any way be held as an accusation against themselves. Responsibility lies entirely with us. Employers who bring them over, or prevent their rejection, under the conditions stated, are guilty of a monstrous crime against civilization. This crime is comparable to onlyone other in our history—the African slave-trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Where the Water Gushes From the Rock Klansmen Assemble Each Year to Drink the Libation of Fellowship.
Meanwhile every conception and institution upon which our social and political life is established is torn from its mooring and broken up by the force of the inpouring waves. In Southern and Eastern Europe and in the Near East, these masses are, or have been, until very recently, ruled as they were in the Middle Ages. Rebellion against tyrants to them means acceptance of Anarchism or Bolshevism, or at least German state Socialism. East of the Rhine and south of the Alps they are capable at present only of running wildly about from one tyranny to another, from one stupid blunder to another and back again. If this population in Europe is proving itself to be totally incompetent to govern itself, how can we expect it to take an intelligent and useful part in all the complexities of democracy here? If a million Hungarians, for instance, have failed at every point of the politicalcompass in Hungary, how, in Heaven's name, can we expect them to succeed in New York or Chicago? That mass of Hungarians, like Italians and Germans, like Jews and Greeks, induces the vilest sort of boss rule. They are largely kept away from our public schools by clerical opposition to our school system. A slave population in Europe, they become a slave population here. Politically they are the willing tools of every hidden and dangerous force at work in our public life.
It is no part of my purpose to arouse, in the slightest degree, hatred of these people. Many of them are kind, innocent, simple, unknowing creatures. As strangers in a strange land, they deserve every degree of consideration, every means of help at our hands, which it is in our power to give to them. Their natural inclination, as well as their great numbers, are responsible for that separation from us which the foreign quarter implies. The continued use of foreign languages, and the clinging to foreign customs,are things which should never have been tolerated on our soil. By herding together they bring up their children in a foreign atmosphere, thus perpetuating and increasing the weaknesses and dangers which they have brought into our national life. I used the word "increasing" advisedly. In Europe each unit of this backward and inept mass of poor is merged in a nation which understands him and where he, in turn, somewhat understands his surroundings. But segregated by language and nationality here, they are broken away from their old moorings without binding themselves to the new. In the old world they are led politically, sometimes, by men of education and ideals. With us they fall easy prey to any fool and fakir and dishonest representative of the political machine or vicious interest which may seek to prey upon them and mislead them.
A few particular facts concerning propagandistic activities among our immigrant population may be illuminating if set downtogether. During the war the pro-Germans organized and conducted a most elaborate and expensive propaganda among our Ukrainian immigrants. This was done in order to weaken Russia at home, both before and after the revolution.
Sinn-Fein Irish, because of their inveterate hatred of the British, were in many cases used to spread pro-German propaganda. This was effectual both before and after we went into the war.
A very large percentage of the Russian Jews in New York City and elsewhere were, at the beginning of the war, pro-German because they were anti-Russian. After we entered the war they were bitterly anti-American because they were pro-Bolshevist. No possible turn of events could make them take a pro-American position upon any issue under the sun. This is the element, by the way, which used funds from Russia to carry on its pro-Bolshevistic propaganda among our Negroes. In certain places, including New York City, it urged the Negroes to arm themselves and fight the whites.
The French-Canadian immigrants among us number, with their children, nearly half a million. During the war they were, strange as it may seem, anti-French. The French-Canadian population is completely dominated, politically, socially and intellectually, by their clergy. These clericals still hate France and the French Government because the French Revolution overthrew the power of the Roman Church in France. They still belong to the ancient regime. So they naturally took the side of the ancient regime, the German side. Among us, they were largely passive. In Canada they actively opposed every war activity of their government from start to finish of the war.
Of the Asiatics there are two main elements—the Japanese and the East Indians. Of the East Indians there are not many, but their number is steadily increasing.They are being widely used to stir up an Indian revolution against the British Empire. Whether this is or is not justified we are not discussing here. The point is that this foreign element is using America as a vantage-point from which to make war upon another country.
Finally, we come to the Japanese. Here we find the climax of this whole matter. The religion of the Japanese immigrants is, primarily, Mikado-worship. Sums of money to build the temples for this delectable form of religious expression are furnished largely by the Japanese government. When we ponder these facts we may well ask whether we as a nation do not ourselves require a guardian. We resemble a five-year old child with a purse full of money, sitting in a poker game with greedy and astute gamblers. To carry our sentimentalism so far, to overwork the theory of the brotherhood of man to such an extent as this, is to court total disaster. We as a nation are asleep because selfish, corrupt and designing interests among us havedrugged us out of our senses. These great interests want cheap labor. They are aided in their designs by a crowd of well-meaning but ignorant sentimentalists, most of whom do not dream that they are helping to destroy our American nation in order to experience an emotional satisfaction. The employers get their cheap labor, and the sentimentalists their self-satisfaction. We, the foolish majority, are losing our freedom and our country. If the facts do not cry us into action, why multiply words? All America is hoping, praying and preparing for peace with Japan. But to further permit even the smallest amount of Japanese immigration will surely tend to war. In the event of war any American in Japan will undoubtedly take the side of his own country. We shall fully expect him to do so. For the same reason the hundred and fifty thousand Japanese in our own country will prove to be a hundred and fifty thousand skillful and resolute enemies. Making an American out of a Japanese under the conditions above described is as impossible as making a sheepout of a goat, or a dog out of a cat. As to whether or not we are superior to the Japanese, is not the matter at issue here. The important fact right here is that we differ greatly from each other in the basic things of life, and these differences are largely inherited qualities. Furthermore, these differences must surely make Japanese amalgamation with our people wholly undesirable. Such a mixture of bloods runs counter to a fundamental principle of biology which all high-school children learn as a matter of course. The offspring of such a blending of widely different stocks are likely to be unstable in mind. In general they can not qualify as to either the physical, mental or moral standards of either race. In amalgamation there is likely to be a loss from the standards of either side.
The Japanese child in the United States is sent to a school owned and controlled by the Japanese Government. There he is taught the language, ideals and duty of an abject subject of the Mikado. Finally,the Japanese birth rate in California is sixty-nine per thousand annually, the white birth rate nineteen per thousand.
"But the pure descendants of the Japanese immigrants may surely change and become real Americans," I hear somebody saying. Meanwhile, we have just been informed that the son of German parents in Cincinnati, who had accepted a Captain-Surgeon's commission in our army and gone to France had not been perfectly Americanized. The fellow was hanged for inoculating our soldiers with disease germs instead of typhoid serum. This creature was born and reared not in the United States, but in the German section of Cincinnati. With this in mind we expect to Americanize the Japanese, the very breath of whose intense religious emotion is the sacred worship of their absolute and august ruler, the Mikado!
Be it a million Russians or a million Japanese, a million Italians or a million French-Canadians—either their importation or their birth upon our soil prevents bythe stifling force of economic competition the birth of a million Americans. In the name of Almighty God and our country, what has become of our brains? These facts are enough to make any of us not totally bereft of his senses to go into the highways and the byways crying for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, or if some man has a better plan for safeguarding the nation conjuring him in God's name to proclaim it.