Introductory material

WHY I WRITE A BOOK

Various representatives of the press, as well as many of my colleagues in the organization of which I have the honor to be the Founder and head, have repeatedly asked me to make a public statement, descriptive of our organization. It was anticipated in certain quarters that we should at once make specific reply to the embittered attacks upon the Klan. Although abundant space in the press was placed at our disposal for this purpose, we did not take advantage of the offer. It is no part of the policy of the Klan to enter into heated public controversies—even in self-defense. We felt all along that a clear and simple statement of facts concerning the form of our organization, its methods and ultimate purposes, while perhaps due the public, was not due the instigators of the attacks upon us. We are not as yet aware of the exact source of these attacks. Yet, I may say, the membership of the Klan universally welcomed it, realizing that sooner or later the Klan must be under fire. Whether or not we are enemies of our country and of freedom we are quite willing to leave for the public to decide.

Meanwhile, the direct effect of these attacks upon the Klan will not be without interest. Our ranks have been rendered more firm and steady. The public has been rather amused than affected seriously by the reams of villification which were heaped upon the Klan. It now remains for us to tell what the Ku Klux Klan really is, how it came into existence, and what it purposes to do through the organized power of its membership.

We have been outrightly accused of maintaining secrecy in the conduct of our organization. We ask, in rejoinder, for how long has it been a crime or a misdemeanor in the United States for a fraternal organization to employ secrecy in the conduct of its affairs? We have, literally, hundreds of secret organizations in this country. The fact that a number of persons draw themselves together in an organization for mutual aid, for mutual confidences, and for mutual effort, implies that they have something in common which they do not wish to share fully with the public. So has every family and almost every business. Then, too, the element of secrecy no doubt develops the interest of the membership, adding to the charm as well as to the value of their fellowship. Concerning this feature of our organization, I feel assured that we might appeal to the common sense and fairness which Americans are always and everywhere ready enough to show. No one expects the Masonic fraternity or the Knights of Columbus,—to mention two large, well-known and respected fraternal organizations in this country,—to exhibit all their forms of salutation and other formalities to the public. We simply claim the same rights and privileges which other fraternal organizations share, both under the law and in the esteem of the public mind.

New organizations and movements usually draw the fire of the uninformed. People are inclined to be suspicious of that which they do not understand. When Masonry first assumed its larger importance in America it was the object of attacks so bitter that some of the members were placed in danger of their lives. An Anti-Masonic party, nearly a hundred years ago, acquired material importance and sent several members to Congress. Just preceding the War Between the States, the Know-Nothing, or Anti-Catholic party ran through its brief but stormy career. This party was caused by the fact that the Catholic Church was growing in certain parts of the country where it had hitherto been almost unknown. When we Klansmen reflect upon these historical facts we are much consoled. It remains only to say, in this connection, that we bear our recent detractors not the slightest ill will whatever. They do not understand us. That is all.

We confess that the Ku Klux Klan has been organized in order to help in the accomplishment of a great task. Neither the magnitude of this task nor its vital importance to the future of our country are yet widely realized. Our American citizenship is usually earnest and active with regard to the discharge of its more simple duties. With reference to larger social problems, however, problems which sometimes assume the form of great national dangers, our country is often enough soundly asleep. The Ku Klux Klan proposes to wake the sleeper and make him at least sit up, look around, and ask the time of day.

Whether or not we are enabled to accomplish all that we have set out to do remains for the future to decide. But I may say that the growth of the Klan and the universal spirit and activity of its membership indicate pretty clearly that neither our hopes nor our efforts, thus far, have been in vain. The Klan is growing in the North and West more rapidly than in the South. It has been carefully and permanently grounded in nearly every large city. It will eventually spread to every town, hamlet and country cross-roads. With our six years of organized effort and our present status in mind, we may be pardoned for saying that we feel that there must be some need for an organization which has, in so short a time, shown such phenomenal strength. The Klan exists because it satisfies a most vital need in our national public life. Our opponents have tried to indicate that our position and purposes are purely negative. Nothing is farther from the truth. Any candid, logical and patriotic mind which will reflect upon this and the following chapters of this book can not be our enemy.

In order to first clear the way of the trivialities which have been placed there to clog our footsteps, I wish in this foreword to state most positively certain facts with reference to our organization. The Ku Klux Klan has not been organized or conducted in opposition to any religion or religious sect, or against the members of any race or language group, either within or without the borders of our country. Upon this point let no doubt be left in the mind of any American. It has been falsely stated that we are fanning the flames of hatred against the Negro race. Exactly the opposite is the truth. To our fellow citizens of the Jewish or the Roman Catholic faith, and to other groups too numerous to mention, we enter a flat denial to all those pure fabrications which have seemingly given them so much alarm. It is, indeed, quite true that our membership is restricted. It includes only citizens of the white race. So does the membership of the Clan-na-Gael and of B'rith Israel. If it may be truthfully said that our membership is also restricted to Christians and to Protestants, this is due purely to the fact that certain deductions may be made from certain paragraphs in our Constitution and By-Laws. We have not yet ceased wondering why attacks should be made upon us in the public press on that score. The membership of the Knights of Columbus is, I believe, restricted to members of the Roman Catholic Church. Is there anything especially dangerous or wrong about that? I should not say so. Catholic Churchmen have both a legal right and a moral right to organize and conduct a fraternal order by and for themselves alone. Moreover, the Knights of Columbus as an organization, and in the personnel of its individual members, would be well within their rights in demanding that they be saved from slander, villification and unjust attacks of every sort, because of the restriction of their membership to those of one faith. Since the end of the war various German organizations, such as fraternal orders, singing societies, etc., have begun to re-establish themselves. These organizations are fully protected by the law and their members do not lack the esteem of their English-speaking fellow citizens. Hence, I would most candidly ask—and would that my voice could be heard throughout the length and breadth of the land—since when has it become a crime for a body of American-born, English-speaking, white citizens to organize themselves into a fraternal order? What has happened in our country which seems to bring our particular racial and social group so much into disrepute? Since the House of Representatives in Washington has investigated us, why is not a resolution presented asking the House to investigate other institutions of a similar nature? However that may be, since we have been duly investigated, and the investigation has ended without the slightest accusation or criticism, so far as we know, on the part of the House Committee, we would now ask our accusers, in their turn, to be candid enough to do one of two things. They must either present further facts to substantiate their accusations or retract the accusations.

We repeat most emphatically—The members of the Ku Klux Klan, as individuals or as Klansmen, are not the enemies of the Negro. We are the best friends the Negro has, here or anywhere. Our organization makes opposition to no religious sect or creed, as such. Our order is based squarely upon the Constitution and laws of our country. We hope never to be unmindful of the basic fact that both the Federal and State Constitutions guarantee freedom of religious belief and practice. We invite our fellow citizens of every faith to join us in the protection of so valuable and sacred a right. Every statement made at any time that we would deny this right to others than ourselves is an absolute and unmitigated falsehood. In conclusion, let me emphasize that the Ku Klux Klan conducts its activities not only within the law, but in active support of the law. Our general organization would not tolerate for a moment any illegal act on the part of any of our local organizations. The Klan has not been formed to express little hatreds but to study crucial problems and aid in the execution of large national policies.

I might add a further word. We take pride in the fact that our national and local organizations have conducted themselves, generally, within the bounds of the strictest discipline. Perhaps it has been because of the ease with which crimes might be committed and our local organization unjustly blamed therefor that we have suffered from a certain sort of criticism and attack from the uninformed and the misinformed. We are now taking steps to make the Klan perfectly secure against such criminal misuse of its name and regalia. Suffice it to say here that we take the keenest pride in our record, and in challenging our opponents and detractors to present the facts which their allegations demand, we ask of them in the most kindly spirit. We take much for granted. We can not be misunderstood for long. We know that many of those who unknowingly oppose us to-day will be our best friends, in many cases, indeed, our ardent companions of to-morrow.

CHAPTER I

The Klan Yesterday and To-day

In many questions, from all sources, I have been asked as to how the Klan of the Sixties was related to the Klan of to-day. The original Ku Klux Klan sprang from the urgent necessities of the Reconstruction period. At the close of the War Between the States, the South was prostrated and devastation was spread from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. Following hard upon the collapse of the Southern Confederacy, hordes of bad white men, generally termed "Carpet-Baggers" and "Scalawags", came into the South to prey upon the prostrated people of that section and to fatten on the ruins of war. This crowd of men had been loyal to neither the Union nor the Confederacy, and, in most instances, traitors to both. The tremendous upheaval had thrown them from obscurity into publicity. They availed themselves of the conditions that obtained to establish themselves and utilized the recently emancipated race of slaves to further their ends. Negroes everywhere were organized and taught to hate the white people of the Southern states. Under martial law they controlled all the elections that were held in the South. From these was elevated to our legislatures and courts an alien race, untaught, unskilled and incapable of government. White men in the South who had borne arms in defense of the Confederacy had the hostility of the so-called Union League directed against them. Their property was invaded, their homes were menaced and in many instances the white women of the South became the prey of Negroes who had been inflamed by the teachings of "Carpet-Baggers" and "Scalawags." The evident purpose was to establish for all time the supremacy of the Negro over our Anglo-Saxon people and civilization.

LT. GEN. NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST The Grand Wizard of the Original Ku Klux Klan.

To meet this condition and arrest this menace, the Ku Klux Klan sprang into existence. The white man's civilization that had been thousands of years in the building was imperilled. The blood of the white man ran like lightning. Tremendous forces leaped from the ashes of defeat and drove like the whirlwind throughout the land. Civilization sounded the note of wild alarm. An empire covering half a continent took form in an hour and more than a half million men were mobilized in a single day in defense of the white man, his home, his civilization and his freedom—against the rise and assaults of an inferior race, many of which within the century, had been cannibals, and some of which were still speaking the jargon of the jungles of Africa.

In the formation of the original Ku Klux Klan there was no thought or purpose in the mind of the white men of the South which made for the suppression of the misguided Negroes by violence. Wise men they were who founded the Invisible Empire and directed the movements of its citizenry. They knew the superstition of the Negro. Interwoven in the Negro's life, religious, social, industrial, was the fantastic belief in the supernatural and the grotesque. To him the ghost was very real and not at all unusual in appearance. In all their folk tales there was a weird intermingling of ghostliness. Rather than intercept by violence the movement of the Negro toward supremacy in the South under the leadership of vicious white men, the Ku Klux Klan devoted itself to thwarting the movement by overawing the Negro through his superstitions. Had this plan not been adopted, the Negro would have been largely exterminated.

This organization of the original Ku Klux Klan made a most thrilling chapter in the history of the Anglo-Saxon civilization in America. It has never been written. The organization has been maligned, misrepresented, and misunderstood for more than fifty years. The Congress of the United States instituted an investigation of the Klan that totaled forty-six volumes in reports and findings, but not in a solitary instance was an outrage or an atrocity in the South fastened upon the organization. The supremacy of the white man was established, the purity of the Anglo-Saxon race was maintained, and both races, white and black, settled down side by side in peace and contentment to work out their essentially different destinies.

The present Klan is a memorial to the original organization, the story of whose valor has never been told, and the value of whose activities to the American nation has never been appreciated. In a sense it is the reincarnation among the sons of the spirit of the fathers. It is a flaming torch of the genius and mission of the Anglo-Saxon committed to the hands of the children which the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are again holding aloft.

The name of the old Klan has been taken by the new as a heritage. The regalia and insignia of the old have been adopted by the new as a mantle of one worthy generation might fall upon the shoulders of its successor. Beyond this point the connection and similarity between the two organizations do not extend. The ritual is not identical. The purpose of each organization, while having a common impulsion, is not the same in extent. The old Klan never intended to reach beyond the horizon of the Southland. The present Klan has purposed the supremacy of our heritage of ideals throughout the nation. There is no intention on the part of the present Klan to intimidate or overawe by spectral, ghostly garb, or to accomplish its aim by demonstrations of force or acts of violence, or by a supergovernment under disguise, or by moving in the darkness of the night. But there is a purpose underlying the entire organization and pulsing in every fiber of its being, to maintain Anglo-Saxon civilization on the American continent from submergence due to the encroachment and invasion of alien people of whatever clime or color. There was not in the old organization a solitary motive except to save the civilization of the white man that had been wrung out of the thousands of years of his struggle upward. There is not a single motive actuating the new Klan except to save the heritage which the fathers have left for us in the present to transmit to the generation yet to come.

A moment's reflection will indicate how natural it is to see the new Klan take form first in the South. With us the issue and the conflict is an old one. Instinctively we scent dangers which our brethren in other sections of the country are apt, as yet, to ignore. For centuries we have been forced to deal, in one form or another, with a problem which always seemed to us and still appears to some of us to be insoluble. I mean the race problem. Yet in this, as in all else, our kinship with our fellow citizens of the North was made evident by an outstanding fact of Reconstruction days. The original Ku Klux Klan was almost as strong in the Union army, maintaining martial law in the defeated states, as among the men who wore the gray and went down to glorious defeat. Had it not been for the active and sympathetic co-operation of large numbers of the Union forces, the achievements of the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction period could not have been accomplished. The time has now come, once more, to bring to our whole country a sense of this great issue. And this issue, the causes of this crisis, has broadened and deepened to a degree which threatens the complete destruction of our civilization.

CHAPTER II

We Americans—A Vanishing People

We Americans are nothing if not humanitarian. We have in the United States many varieties of organization for the assistance of the various foreign racial and national groups upon our soil. We have also done not a little for the succor of the peoples of the old world who are now in such great distress. The larger humanitarian motive is as a guiding star to millions of Americans. It leads them and lights their way. To many such it may seem unnecessary, to some preposterous, for the organization of which I have the honor to be chief to be founded and developed. But a sober second thought is required here. Let us grant that a people which, in its weakness, faces permanent injury, requires help that it may survive and grow. Then indeed, it follows that we Americans, as a people, need to help ourselves first of all. As a people and a nation we are face to face with dissolution. In the Ku Klux Klan we have an institution designed to help in the stupendous task of saving ourselves from failing and falling.

We Americans as a peculiar people face extinction upon our own soil. Let me be fully understood. I do not wish in the least to appear sensational. I wish only to state a few simple facts which should be apparent to any American who investigates, ever so briefly, the true condition of his country. So often, during the past twenty-two years, I have been oppressed in heart as I have seen how little public interest this crucial matter has aroused. If my tendency has, at times, been somewhat pessimistic and fearful, I claim that there is cause enough for fear and pessimism. Surely there is great need that intensest sadness and sorrow strike deep into the hearts of Americans, if we are now to help ourselves and live.

We Americans are a perishing people. From the point of view of history we are being wiped from the face of the earth with a rapidity which almost staggers hope. First let me clearly define what I mean by the phase, "We American People." I mean by that phrase those white, native-born citizens of this country whose ancestry, birth and training has been such as to give them to-day a full share in the basic principles, the ideals and the practice of our American civilization. I do not mean that a foreign-born citizen can not be a good citizen. On the contrary, many of our foreign-born are excellent citizens. Yet I most positively mean what the title at the head of this chapter distinctly suggests. We, the American people, we whose breed fought through the Revolutionary War and the War Between the States, the people by whose courage the great American wilderness was penetrated, and by whose painstaking industry that wilderness was subjugated and made fruitful—that this people, who gave to the world Washington and Franklin, Jefferson and Hamilton, Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster, Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln—this people, our people, is on the downward way to the early ending of its remarkable history. The mighty length and breadth of the soil made sacred by our struggles and our victories is now being given over, with ever greater rapidity, to various peoples of a totally different mold. I am not saying that these other peoples are bad in character or in any way unworthy. May Heaven witness for my colleagues and myself of the Ku Klux Klan that we bear them no ill will whatsoever. I hope that none of us as individuals or as an organization may do them aught but good. We wish, above all, to be moved in all things by that Christian spirit upon which our organization is founded, and which, I trust, moves its humblest member. But we have come to sound a warning throughout the length and breadth of the land—a warning which everyone of our own people from Newfoundland to California and from Florida to Alaska must hear and heed. We are perishing as a people and the land of our fathers shall presently know us no more. Emerson once said, "What you do speaks so loud I can not hear what you say." Let me here change the words but not the meaning. The facts cry out so loud that we can not hear the vain and wordy opinions of the theorists and the sentimentalists. The prattle of these sentimentalists, be it ever so noisy, can not prevent us from both seeing and hearing the real drama. We are witnessing the greatest tragedy of the ages.

Only Americans May Pass

To place these facts in their proper relation, one to another, we must study the map of the United States. That map, hanging on the wall of the old school-house, or facing us over our desks in the library at home, seems always to appear so big and brave and bold. To the child at school it appears to flaunt its very bigness in the face of all the world. My fellow American citizens in all the states, study that map carefully. In terms of the civilization of the whole world it will richly repay investigation. Let us move with the sun from the valley of the river St. Johns in Maine, to the far-off mountains of our California. Incoming masses by the hundred thousand flood New England. They do not speak our language, can not know our laws, and do not mix with our native people because there are hardly any natives in New England left to mix with. In dozens of schools built for the children of the great city of Boston and its suburbs the English language is not even taught, not to speak of as being used as a means of acquiring knowledge or of taking loyal and useful part in our national life. Throughout twenty varieties of the stupendous foreign sections in all our great industrial cities of the North, the very conditions of life prevent millions from learning the English language or taking an American breath into their nostrils. From St. Louis and Chicago and Milwaukee on the West to New York and Boston on the East democratic American political life is now almost impossible—unthinkable. To this we shall recur in later chapters. Just now we must proceed rapidly to other parts of our map. In our Far Western territory, where a million square miles of mountain and valley are beginning a marvelous development, we Americans are fighting one of the most desperate and crucial social conflicts in the history of our country and of European civilization. Our Western people are striving for the very salvation of our soil as the heritage of the white American. This conflict rages day by day—week by week—year by year. Our brethren of the West are misunderstood and their crying call for help is largely rejected by the East. There are counties in California where more Japanese babies are being born each year than white babies. The Japanese in California are multiplying at the stupendous rate of sixty-nine per thousand, annually, while the white people of California increase at the rate of eighteen per thousand. But the eighteen per cent. includes the relatively high rate of the foreign-born whites. The American white people of California increase by an annual rate of less than ten per thousand. Look you well, fellow Americans, to this part of our map. Go on in your indifference and carelessness, and these western valleys and mountains will, in the days of your children, be blood-soaked by one of the most desperate of interracial wars—a war at once civil and international—in the history of the world, and despite all your treaties of peace.

In the Southwest are over eighteen hundred miles of boundary line between ourselves and the people of Mexico. I know that I am expressing for my colleagues of the Ku Klux Klan who dwell along that eighteen hundred miles of boundary line their inmost thought, when I say that they wish only peace and fellowship and mutual aid and generosity to mark all our relations with the simple and kindly people of Mexico. But we are here marshalling the facts—the staggering facts which the American people must know and ponder well to-day. Nearly half a million Mexicans, speaking various dialects of the Spanish and Indian languages, have recently come across our Southwestern boundary line. Surely it is not with any ill will in our hearts that we say with all the power we have that these thousands can not share our American democracy with us in this generation. In Mexico these people can be ruled in such a way and take such measures of progress as may befit them. Granted time and they may evolve a successful democracy all their own. But in this generation they will make democracy impossible wherever large numbers of them settle among us. If immigration continues through the next generation THEY WILL FOREVER ENCROACH UPON AND OCCUPY OUR SOUTHWEST. The native-born, white American will either become a small ruling class, or fade from sight altogether. There are factories in Texas with practically none but Mexicans employed. There are sections of the Southwest where, in town and on the countryside, there are many Negroes, Mexicans and Japanese, few Americans.

Finally, we come to the South. Leaving the burden of this argument to future chapters, we can here take but a rapid glance at the inexorable problem of the Southland. May Providence give to us men and women of the South the power we need to place our problem before our fellow citizens in other sections in such a way as to win their minds and hearts by the goodness of our cause. If I but could, I would move my hand along that ancient and deadly line which separates us from our country-men and wipe it out forever. Our problem of the Negro, men and women of the North, is your problem. If we fail, you fail. We plead with you to join with us in freeing all our minds from bigotry, all our hearts from unworthy passions, and all our thoughts from sectional misunderstanding.

The larger fact which I seek in this connection to strike into the mind and conscience of my country is as simple as the multiplication-table. The Negro of to-day is less in numbers than the white inhabitants in all states but one, for a single reason. That reason is the high average mortality among the Negroes. The enormous birth rate of the Negro population would rapidly submerge our white population if the Negroes were not decimated by a high death rate. The Negroes' numbers are kept within the number of our white population by various dreadful diseases. Though these diseases afflict us all in the South, the white people are generally far more immune than the blacks. We are somewhat behind the North and West in the practice of medicine, sanitation, and the general prevention of disease. But we are making great strides in this as in other means of progress. As all our people, including the Negroes, are progressively saved from the ravages of disease, the Negroes' birth rate will be more and more relentlessly shown in the census of the living. As night follows day, the Negro will, in the future, move on toward larger and larger comparative numbers in the South.

And so this map of our beloved land, which, as school children, we gazed upon with deep longings toward the future greatness of our country—this map to-day, section by section, is discolored and fading. So do our hopes, too, fade and fail. We Americans are a perishing people, and the things we have inherited and hold dearest in our hearts are on the way to dissolution and total loss. Of all the greater people of history, we Americans least deserve even the pity which is the portion of those who fail. The glory of our rise, the large part that is ours in the present, the majestic hope of the nation which prophesies such a resplendent future—all this is our heritage. We lack only understanding of ourselves and the public spirit required to take action. The Ku Klux Klan, in garb of strange device, marshalled under the flag of our country, has thrust itself as a dire warning across the downward pathway of the American people—our own people, whom we love.

CHAPTER III

The Fraternalism of the Klan

Surely there can not be in this frank statement of the principles and the purposes of the Ku Klux Klan any ground for the criticism that the organization was founded on racial and sectarian animosities and hatreds. The Klan is neither anti-racial nor anti-sectarian. It is pro-American. We concede to every distinctive organization in race and religion the same rights of restricting and qualifying its membership that we claim for ourselves. If, in the light of all the past, and in view of the present, we are insisting upon an organization of native-born white American citizens, we do not, by stipulating the conditions of membership in the Ku Klux Klan, avow hostility to any one class or company who may not, for one reason or another, qualify for membership in our organization. Indeed, as Americans we not only have the right to organize under the law and in keeping with the law, but far more than that—in the exercise of that right the Klan is positively committed to vouchsafing the same right to any other class of people on the American continent who desire to organize themselves for patriotic, social, fraternal or religious purposes. Only this too is also stoutly maintained: Any organization that is formed and fostered under the flag of our common country must not be inimical to our democratic government and institutions.

There are numerous organizations in America to which members of the Klan would not be admitted. These organizations are racial, social, political and sectarian. There has never been any complaint against these organizations. They have never been subjected to scrutiny by the Department of Justice of the United States Government. They have never been brought under Congressional investigation. They have lived and grown and pursued their purposes of organization without restraint or interference from the outside. All this is in exact keeping with the freedom that is granted under the Constitution and the laws. We realize only too well that when organizations have arisen that have threatened the peace or morals or health of our social life, or, for any purpose, inveighed against the basic institutions of our country or the orderly conduct of our people in obedience to constituted authority, such organizations have been speedily suppressed. There are not a few of the leaders of such movements in the penal institutions of our country to-day, designated as political prisoners, because they undertook to obstruct the machinery of the country in its war activities. The Ku Klux Klan is committed so thoroughly—nothing remaining uncommitted—to the full freedom of human life guaranteed under the Constitution to American citizens that it can never interfere with the rights of groups or individuals outside its ranks. It stands everywhere against disorderly and disruptive movements which deny the authority of the government and disobey its mandates whether in time of war or peace. If there is one thing, more than any other, which we Americans must now devoutly take to heart it is obedience to law. Perhaps we are rightly accused by Europeans of being quite the most lawless among civilized nations. This is indicated by nothing so much as by the series of terrible race riots which have disgraced some of our great cities during recent years—notably Atlanta, Washington, East St. Louis, Chicago and Omaha. Space limits us here to the description of a single case in which the Klan has been involved. At a small town in Florida, a terrible race riot was precipitated on election day, 1920. It was reported that one or more Negroes, disqualified by law from voting, were nevertheless demanding that they be permitted to vote. This incident led to others, and resulted in a terrible race riot. More than a score of persons, mostly Negroes, were killed. The white men, having defeated and dispersed the Negroes of their own community, thoroughly inflamed, proceeded, late in the day, to march upon ————, for the purpose of attacking the Negroes of that community. The Klansmen notified by a member of the —— Klan, of the approach of a force of armed whites, armed themselves and placed their services at the disposal of the officers of the law. They met the oncoming force just outside the limits of their own town. Unhappily, the attackers were not turned back without an armed conflict. In this affray two Klansmen were killed. The mob was driven back. The Klansmen lost their lives in defense of the law and while protecting the Negroes of their town.

On another occasion one of the largest and soundest local Klans ever founded by our organizers was instantly dissolved, because our rules and regulations in these things were violated. The Klan in question wished to find a remedy for a serious local disorder. A tradesman in the community was conducting a thriving bootlegging establishment which grew to be a scandal to the whole town. The Klan, recently organized, and not fully comprehending our methods, posted notices warning the culprit to leave town. They emphasized their warning by posting along side certain signs of the Ku Klux Klan. For this interference with the orderly process of justice in this case the local Klan in question was quickly disbanded by our headquarters.

With this and other similar incidents in mind the reader may well imagine the thoughts and feelings of Klansmen everywhere when they are told that their organization has been founded for the purpose of "Lynching Niggers." We have been accused of crimes in towns where we had no local Klan within hundreds of miles. In such cases the lynching accusations are often carried on the wings of great organizations of the press. Our denials we find ineffectual. But of this I am certain: The truth will sometimes overtake the lies and the evil will recoil on the heads of the evil-doers.

But in addition to the purely patriotic principles of the Klan, which are fundamental, it is a fraternal organization. A Charter for the Klan was granted by the State of Georgia. All of its activities are subject to scrutiny by the State and review by properly constituted authority. The Charter may be revoked at the will of the State. Where-ever irregularities are shown in the conduct of the Klan, or wherever the Klan departs from the purposes of its organization as set forth in the Charter, the Klan may be disbanded by due process of law. It is therefore not an organization that has sprung up over night, without responsibility, claiming independence of the law of the land.

The Klan offers its membership a graduate course in fraternalism. There are several orders administered and each of these orders marks an advance in devotion to our common country and in those fraternal relations and responsibilities which bind us to our fellow men. There can be nothing in this organization, as there is nothing in the many fraternal organizations in this country, that is inimical to the highest sense of social order. Indeed, underlying the fraternalism of the Klan is a consecration to the American home, the preservation of its sanctity and the maintenance of ideal family life. From this a sympathetic helpfulness flows out to those in distress and discouragement, and a force of strong men is thrown about the weak and helpless without respect to color or creed. This is the service of love and sacrifice to our age and generation which is symbolized by the fiery cross.

CHAPTER IV

The Klanishness of The Klan

It is perhaps not only proper but also necessary, in view of the vigorous and persistent attacks made on the Klan, to discuss more fully the apparent exclusiveness of the organization. I desire to reiterate with emphasis that the Klan is a purely American organization assembled around the Constitution of the United States, to safeguard its provisions, advance its purposes, and perpetuate its democracy. This definition of the Klan in its organization necessarily carries the idea of exclusiveness. All men without respect to race, color and religion may not be organized into a democracy. Democracy can not be established by outside pressure. It is something which must be developed in the individual consciousness, and is of very slow growth. We speak loosely when we talk of the Anglo-Saxon having grown into a democracy through a thousand years of struggle. Five thousand years would be a more accurate statement of the fact. During all the slow processes of the development of the white man's civilization, there was something inherent in his life that slowly pushed its way up into the consciousness of the individual until it found expression in constitutional government, in freedom of thought and speech, and in all the elements of political and religious liberty. One of the most developed expressions of this growth into democracy is our American Government with all its complexities and intricacies. It should go without saying that all men, without reference to origin or history, can not be thrust into this country, and, under restraint and repression, be forced into our ways of thinking and living and so attain the true value of American citizenship. To begin with, a great many people, living under one form of autocracy or another, have never been awakened to a sense of and desire for democracy. In others the sense has begun to stir, but has not had the opportunity or the time for that sure growth that would transform them into a citizenship capable of pure self-government.

This fact has been demonstrated by the futility of the attempts in Russia, first under the administration of Kerensky and now under Lenine and Trotsky. The bolshevist camarilla attempted to take that nation, which has been subjected for ages to one of the simplest and meanest despotisms on earth, and organize it into a sort of democracy. This proposition is still further illuminated by the experience of Germany in her attempt to build a democracy on the ruins of her old autocracy. The best thinkers in the German nation, notwithstanding the superior intellectual, economical and industrial qualifications of the people, predict that a real democracy can not be established in Germany in less than fifty years. If these two nations, both white, the one having the most robust physical manhood in the world, and the other the most vigorous mentality, can not rise from autocracy into democracy, how absurd it appears that we should take great masses of the untaught, underfed, inferior people of all the lands and undertake to precipitate them, in masses, into our very peculiar and intricate national democracy.

The "Starry" Flag and the "Fiery" Cross Shall Not Fail

The Klan, organized to protect and advance the cause of our native institutions, is therefore exclusive in the restriction of its membership to white native-born Americans. We believe that only one born on American soil, surrounded by American institutions, taught in the American schools, harmonized from infancy with American ideals, can become fully conscious of what our peculiar democracy means and be adequately qualified for all the duties of citizenship in this republic.

In order to become a member of the Klan one must subscribe without reservation of any sort to the Constitution of the United States. Loyalty to the Constitution must be so thorough that no ultimate allegiance to any foreign institution, power or country can be retained. Committal to Americanism is so absolute that nothing is left uncommitted. The Ku Klux Klan is patriotic to the last and highest degree. We believe that the principles upon which this republic was founded, and around which the great War Between the States was waged, should be constantly reaffirmed and emphasized.

The American nation has acted as a great magnet. The American city in particular has been an irresistible lure to the unhappy and oppressed peoples of the world. From all shores great tides of immigration have flowed in upon us. The alien peoples have not been distributed over the vast area of our common country, but have, for the most part, been congested in our great centers. Many of them can not read and write their own language. On the average they are three times as prone to pauperism and nine times as prone to crime as our native-born Americans. Because of their numbers, as well as their nationalistic tendencies, they organize themselves into separate communities and often breed hostility to American institutions. How natural that such foreign communities should spawn all forms of social and political vices.

Of course this plethora of population violates the fundamental law of our social life. This nation grew strong and took on its peculiar virtues out in the open fields and under the gleaming stars. Granting that the possibilities of democracy are inherent in many of these aliens that have been admitted into our country, the possibilities can not now be realized in the great cities of the nation. We believe that one can never be wholly patriotic or thoroughly democratized until he obeys God's great first commandment and settles upon some spot of ground and subdues it and makes it yield its secrets and its wealth. Permit these people that have come to us to segregate in cities by race and tongue, and continue to live in squalor and dirt, often accursed by disease and ignorance, foreign in habit and thought and pursuit, understanding our country only as an unrestricted opportunity for license, and it presents the gravest problems that our nation was ever called upon to solve. This is especially true since these aliens have been permitted to qualify for citizenship and given suffrage within a space of time so short that they can not even become acquainted with the outward manners and customs of the American people, not to mention the basic intellectual and spiritual factors of our national consciousness.

More than fifty per cent. of the votes cast in the last presidential election were cast by cities. For the first time in the history of this country the urban population exceeds the rural. This vast alien population now holds and exercises the balance of political power. HERE IS A CHALLENGE WITH TRUMPET VOICE TO EVERY NATIVE-BORN AMERICAN TO FACE THE CRISIS AND PRESERVE OUR DEMOCRACY FOR THE GENERATIONS TO COME.

One other condition is imposed on all men who would be associated with the Klan, and that is subscription to the tenets of Christianity. We are in no sense a religious organization. There is no purpose of founding what has been suggested by our critics, a new American church. The Klan does not interfere, through membership, with any man's interpretation of religious truth or his connection with any branch or denomination of the Christian church. In fact, the Klan has nothing to do with dogma, creed, or ritual. Yet the Klan does insist that every man becoming a member shall strive to carry himself by the code of conduct promulgated by Jesus Christ. It is a high standard of living that the Klan undertakes to maintain, and at the very threshold of the organization one must accept this highest standard of ethics and morals that the world has ever known.

There are many who can not accept these stern conditions. But certainly it is not an arbitrary discrimination against any class, or sect, or race. We believe that, interwoven into the entire fabric of real Americanism, are the principles of Christianity. Reverent recognition of this fact has been made in the Bills of Right and in nearly every state constitution of the Union. In 1895 the Supreme Court of the United States, in a decision on the Alien Labor Contract Law, declared this to be a Christian nation, and the Court was very careful to establish its decision by referring explicitly to the principles and declarations of Christianity which run through all the organic laws of the country. So, believing as we do, that our patriotic principles and Christianity are inseparable and indivisible, we hold steadfastly to the Constitution and the Sermon on the Mount. It goes without saying that men who repudiate either can not look for fellowship in the Klan.

CHAPTER V

Is The Klan Anti-Semitic

Referring to the exclusiveness of the Klan, I am not quite prepared to admit that the conditions stipulated for membership in the organization set up the insuperable barrier that some people suspect. It has been pointed out in many hostile criticisms that the Semitic race is excluded from membership in the Klan. It is not true, for instance, that the Klan has set up arbitrary barriers to the admission of the Hebrew; but it is true that the orthodox Hebrew has established around himself barriers that preclude his admission into the organization.

The orthodox Jews are perhaps the most exclusive people in the civilized world. Their racial pride exceeds the pride of any nation or any land. They have a right to be proud in view of all their history. The Hebrew literature, the Hebrew religion, the Hebrew commonwealth, and more than all, the Hebrew jurisprudence, much of which has been adopted by our western society, entitles the race to hold to its distinctive qualities and characteristics with a pride that all the world respects and admires. They have everywhere been a peculiar people. Because of marked racial distinctiveness, not to say eminence, they have drawn a boundary line about their social and religious life, shutting themselves in and the rest of mankind out.

Perhaps there is no patriotism in the world comparable to that of the Jew. His attachment to his ancient home-land and to his institutions has been through the ages a consuming passion. In the early history of his development, when defeated in war, reduced to slavery and crushed under mountainous oppression, his loyalty to his country and his creed never wavered. There is no picture in history more pathetic and, indeed, more inspiring than that of the Jew in bondage. Toiling in the brickyards of Goshen, taunted with the despoiled glory of his country, the taskmaster demanding, as the burning lash was laid upon his bared shoulders, that he sing the songs of his native land, his intrepid spirit was unconquered and his superb loyalty unbroken: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning, and if I do not esteem thee above my chiefest joy, let my tongue cleave unto the roof of my mouth."

The Jew has brought his religion to America, establishing his temple worship and clinging tenaciously to his creed of Theism. He has been welcomed with a hospitality such as has been tendered the Jew by no other nation. His religious institutions have had all the protection of the law thrown about them, and they have been covered by the broad mantle of American liberalism. He has been granted the right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of his own conscience, with none to molest him or make him afraid. But he has organized in America no system of evangelism to convey his religious message to the people without the pale. He has made no proselytes or attempted to make any. He has held his church exclusively for himself and his posterity. To the orthodox Jew his religion is entirely an expression of his nationality. He has never invited men without creed to inquire into his dogmas and his doctrines. Indeed, he has held to his religion as a heritage that belongs to the Jew and to which none other than a Jew could subscribe as a matter of right or even as a privilege. A highly intelligent and influential Gentile sect, the Unitarians, has built its religious life about the doctrine of Theism. There are no fundamental or essential differences between the orthodoxy of the Jew and that of this Gentile sect, but even the Gentile theist has had no invitation to Judaism, and has been tendered scant cordiality by this proud, exclusive race that took its religion from the visible and audible presence of Jehovah and preserved it inviolate for themselves and for their kind.

In coming to America the orthodox Jew has brought with him all the racial pride that distinguishes him throughout the ages. He does not undertake to mingle his social life with that of the native people of the country, nor does he invite those of other racial lineage to cross his threshold. He marries and intermarries only with his kind. If the offspring of the orthodox Jew marries a Gentile he is excommunicated with drastic and fearful ceremony. So does the Jew keep himself apart. Even in the remote and sparsely populated sections of the country, where a single Jewish family is established in a village or at a cross-roads, selling merchandise, when the time comes for the marrying of his children, he does not seek or desire that the people with whom he has been trading, or that the children with whom his children have been taught in the common schools, shall be introduced into Jewish family life. He seeks to mate his children with members of his own race, even though the mating has to be done at long range. Sometimes a suitable husband for a marriageable daughter, or an acceptable wife for a marriageable son, has to be obtained in New York or Chicago or San Francisco, from a thousand to three thousand miles away.

Perhaps this Jew has understood for ages what some of our American sociologists will not learn from biology; that is, that the amalgamation of two distinctive race types may lose, in the offspring, much of the distinctive good of both. A people of mixed race is long in establishing both the fact and the sense of unity. Its individual minds tend to instability. Witness, for instance, the results due to the divergent people who inhabit Ireland. Racial stability, as a biological fact in the realm of psychology, is a precious result, perfected only by long, very long unity of blood. A mixed race finds, for a long period, difficulty in attaining individual balance and social peace. With the orthodox Jew another racial purpose inclines him, with relentless will, toward racial segregation. His people are the chosen of Almighty God. They listen through the centuries for the voices of angels proclaiming the advent of the true Messiah. To mix his blood with that of the Gentile is to lose his vision, his hope and his immortal soul.

The Klan organizes itself around the principles of Christianity, which diverge widely from the principles of Jewish orthodoxy. If it requires that those seeking admission into the organization should subscribe to the tenets that are Christian, it can not be construed into hostility toward the Jewish race. We believe that, side by side, a few Jews and many Christians, or a few Christians and many Jews may live in peace and contentment. For in either case the minority can never, by power of number, challenge the basic things of civilization of the majority. Let me here emphasize with all the power I possess: in America the Jew must ultimately mix with the Gentile. One million Jewish immigrants and their descendants can be, and will be, through the centuries, absorbed into the great body of our American people. Here we touch upon the true cause of the modern Zionism. His exclusiveness forbade the Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Roman, and the Russian, to destroy his racial identity. To-day he is surrendering in Western Europe and America to the liberalism of the younger generation of Jews and the neighborliness of the modern Gentile. Liberalism and Americanization will eventually break down the exclusiveness of even so large a number as we now have among us. But if practically free immigration continues and five millions, or ten millions, of Jews come to us within the next generation—then we shall have a people within a people, a state within a state, and the sad conditions of Poland or Roumania will be re-enacted in America. A two per cent. Jewish population can be, ultimately, thoroughly Americanized. A ten per cent. Jewish population will lead us from danger unto danger. We shall have absolute Jewish separatism on the one hand, and anti-Semitism on the other. We shall then witness all those profound and terrible reactions which relentlessly mark the sharp contacts of two vitally different societies upon the same soil. I submit that when the Klan as an organization, holding to the tenets of Christianity, provided that any white native-born American who subscribes to its conditions may enter into the Klan, the Jew was not arbitrarily excluded. In fact, there are some native-born American Jews who have accepted Christianity and have at the same time become eligible to membership in the Klan. But the hard and fast racial organization of the orthodox Jew does not permit him to go outside of prescribed boundaries in either his social or his religious life. We have not excluded the Jew. The orthodox Jew has excluded himself.

The Klan not only protests that it is not anti-Semitic. The Klan seeks the execution of a policy which will prevent the growth of anti-Semitism in America.

CHAPTER VI

Is The Klan Anti-Catholic?

The Catholic colony of Maryland, under the Calverts, was composed of a most excellent type of freedom-loving Englishmen. Cardinal Gibbons, who recently passed to his reward, was a fine example of this type. These people were seeking, as were so many others who then came to America, liberation from tyranny, bigotry, and intolerance. They brought with them a spirit not unlike that of the Cavaliers to the south of them, to whom their destiny was to be indissolubly linked by ties that remain unbroken to this day. These brave Catholic settlers in the wilderness, many of whom were people of refinement and education, invested themselves wholeheartedly in the early development of our country. No well-informed student of American history doubts that their large contributions to our American nation have seldom enough been sufficiently recognized.

Klankrest—Home Donated to William Joseph Simmons by Klansmen of the Nation "As a Token of Love and Esteem."

In the great battle of Long Island, in the summer of 1776, Washington stood upon an eminence and watched the Maryland brigade as it strove to cut its way through the encircling forces of the British. "Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose," he said, as he observed their desperate position. Later in the day, when he saw them fall, like the leaves of Autumn, he is said to have wept over the loss of the very elite of his army. Of such stuff as this were the Maryland Catholics in the American Revolution. The historian, John Fiske, describes that terrible and unhappy day (Battle of Long Island, 1776) as follows: "In this noble struggle, the highest honors were won by the brigade of Maryland men, commanded by Smallwood, and throughout the war we shall find this honorable distinction of Maryland for the personal gallantry of her troops fully sustained, until in the last pitched battle, at Eutaw Springs, we see them driving the finest infantry of England at the point of the bayonets."

Just a word more with reference to this sort of American Catholic. In the spring of 1921 a distinguished assembly of educators and savants, representing nearly every country, assembled with the University alumni to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the University of Virginia. The opening prayer of the first public meeting was offered by the Catholic Bishop of Richmond. In that invocation the Bishop returned thanks to Almighty God for that great deed of Thomas Jefferson which led to the separation of Church and State in Virginia.

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 ancestry may 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 Catholic edifices, 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 children out 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. When we 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 the best 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 have been 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 the abolition 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. They are 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 an Anglo-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, that we 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

Diligent inquiries 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 usually employed, 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. The tragedy 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 the Fiery 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 the invisible 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 is marked 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

Much ado 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. These symbols 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 of its 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 some function, 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. These carry 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, but wherever 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, as an 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

Once a 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 sides has 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 sometimes seemed 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 had jeopardized 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. Our minds 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

In a 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.