ON SECRET SOCIETIES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 36, 11 August 1923, Page 19

ON SECRET SOCIETIES

LAUGHTER IS DEATH.

Ku Klux Klan, we are told, is fall- ». ing to pieces through internal dissension; and we can well believe it, since it has ; broken the first rule which should gov- • crn the conduct of a secret society. Im- '. perial Wizard Evans and Emperor "Sim- ;. mons are fighting in' the Georgia Court ■ for the control of the "Invisible Em- - pire." It is not enough to assume these high-sounding names; you must act according to them if you are to earn them, says "The-Times." Emperors and Imperial Wizards lose all their, majesty and their magic if they appeal to the common, law; and as for an Invisible Empire, it ceases to be invisible, or an empire, the moment it acknowledges a higher power than itself by -washing its dirty linen before that power.. The appeal of a secret society, whether to its own members or to the outer world, is the appeal to that sense of mystery which lurks ■in all of us, and when we hear of charges ' of embezzlement, of restraining orders, and sheriffs in controi, that sense of mystery is gone. It dies in litigation as a. fish dies on dry land. There is a great pleasure in thinking of secret societies, and romances are full of them. There must also be a great pleasure in belonging to them, in swearing dreadful oaths of secrecy and devotion; but the trouble begins as soon as the sec- ■'■ ret society starts to do anything. Then, — '■■' at least in our material modern world, "it" "" needs money and organisation; arid "at""' once there is something to quarrel about. ••■- Human nature does not lose its weaknesses by belonging to a secret society any more than by embracing a "fancy religion"; it is romantic in theory but prosaic in practice. It will embrace ideals, divine or diabolical, with ardour, and then quarrel about twopence-half-penny or a question of precedence. There have been secret societies that were really terrible and secret; but they have flour- - ished because they had something- real"' and terrible to fight against. Theyhave" • flourished where the Government was the enemy of the people and where its aim was to suppress any power but its own. There was, for instance, the secret society of Maternus in the reign of Commodus. He almost succeeded, as Gibbon tells us, when he was encompassed in Rome, in a surprising and romantic plan. "He ordered his followers to disperse, to pass the Alps in Bmall parties and various disguises, and to assemble in Home, during the licentious tumult of the festiv.il |of Cybele. To murder Commodus and ■.- i to ascend the vacant throne was the ambition of no vulgar robber." But «-c may be sure that neither Maternus nor any - • of his confederates would have appealed .. to the Imperial Courts of law. A lval danger made their society secret; a real ■■ enemy kept them united against him; and even so the plot was betrayed at the .last moment by an accomplice. But, we may guess, there is little romance in belonging to secret societies such n6 tnis. They mean business and are as matter-of-fact as an army in the field. The secret society of our time is romantic because it does not mean business, because it tries to imitate the practical secret societies of the past merely in their secrecy wearing masks for the sake of masquer- ■ •' ceding. So any real business is likely to bs the death of it. The members can agree and preserve their mystery over titles and ceremonies; but if once they begin to do anything, the prosaic habits of , civilised life 'are too strong for. them. Then ■• I they quarrel and appeal to.the policem&n | just as if they were ordinary unconsel i crated citizens in a street row. And at--1 once there is a reductio ad absurdum of then- whole state of being. The world laughs at them—they may even, be moved to laugh at themselves-and laughter is death to a secret society. -