Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1923. MUMMERY AND MONEY

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 152, 26 December 1923, Page 6

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1923. MUMMERY AND MONEY

Some men do not know* when they are weir off, and William Joseph Simmons, of Atlanta, Georgia, is one of them. About eight years ago he conceived the brilliant idea of reviving the Ku Klux Klan, the secret society which was organised in the Southern States of America after the Civil Warln order to protect the whites during the period of disorder and reconstruction that followed and to check the danger threatened by the enfranchisement of the emancipated negroes. Not only negroes but Jews, Roman Catholics, Labour agitators, and Radicals required to be ' kept in their places in the interests of " 100 per cent. Americanism " by the new organisation. After some private propaganda it was ' formally called into being in the autumn of 1915. The hour was midnight,' the place was a mountain-top not far from Atlanta, and it is to be hoped that even at this opening ceremony the little company was arrayed in the nightgowns which have given an air of mystery '■ and majesty to all subsequent Ku Klux Klan meetings. As they stood there " bathed m the. sacred glow of the fiery cross "—it would have been a tame business if there had been no sacred nightgowns to catch the sacred light—" the Invisible Empire i was called from its slumber of half a century." The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were incorporated as. a', fraternal secret society described as "the soul of chivalry and virtue's impenetrable shield," and pledged to maintain the supremacy of the whites and to keep eternally ablaze the sacred fire of a fervent devotion to a pure Americanism.",

When Mr. W. J. Simmons set out on the crusade he is said to have been a Methodist .minister, but he had become a Colonel before he reached the mountain-top. The tables of the new law which he brought down with him from this Georgian Sinai seem to have provided for his promotion to the rank of Imperial Wizard. has been taken to the " strikingly unAmerican sound " of the, new title and it is probable that'the-same captious critic 1 was no. better pleased when the Imperial Wizard developed into a.Klemperbr. If Imperial Wizard is un-American, Klemperor is surely,un-American and un-everything else but tomfoolery, but as much might be said of almost every other item in the, nomenclature of this extraordinary organisation. Mr. Israel Zangwill has had the courage to tell an American audience that Americans haveno sense of humour, and in support of the charge he referred to the Ku Klux-Klan as "an exaggerated Boy Scout movement" which would be laughed out of existence in England. An organisation with a KlemPeror, and an Imperial Wizard, and an Imperial Giant, and an Imperial Kleagle, and any number of minor Kleagles and Dragons and other absurdities, might get recruits in a British community' from the nursery or the kindergarten, but a Boy Scout would never stoop to such foolery. , But the real Ku Klux Klan has its serious aspects, and one of these is its financis 1 side. The entrance fee is ten dollars, of which the Imperial Kleagle keeps four, the King Kleagle one, and the Dragon 50 cents. From these fees and the "subscriptions of eighteen dollars a year Mr. Frank Kent, who .recently investigated' the subject for the Baltimore " Sun/ estimates that the "Imperial Treasury" derives a revenue of 900,000 dollars a year. The profit of nearly four dollars ou the ," shroud of mystery " —it would not cost more than a'dollar as a nightgown—and other regalia is another heavy item. So cheerfully did the finances thrive that the founder vr^e able to buy himstrif a thirty-tbousand d.ollar house in

Atlanta, and with a large-and expanding income and a title which no other earthly potentate could rival, what more could Klemperor Simmons want 1 Unfortunately, wealth andhonouriar beyond what the Methodist Church could have given him were,not enough. He must have real power too, and this was gradually being taken from him by Mr. H. W. Evans, who had succeeded him as Imperial Wizard. His own familiar friend, whom he had himself transformed from a dentist into .a' Wizard, was betraying him. For about' a year a desperate struggle has been proceeding between the Wizard and the Klemperor for the control of the organisation, and so desperate has it become that the victory may not be worth having.

" We are on the rocks," said the Klemperor early last month, " and we may as well admit it." The occasion was the murder of William Coburg, who as attorney for Simmons had been endeavouring to take the control of the Klan from the Evans group and to restore it to the hands of the founder. The murderer was : William Fox, who was acting as N Evans's publicity manager. Coburg's investigations had involved Fox in criminal actions,; and Fox shot him because 'he would rather be hanged than ruined." With a dispatch which is rare in the ■ criminal procedure of the United States, Fox has been found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment, for life. It-is, of course, true that an American trial often proves to have only just begun with, the verdict of the. jury, but to the public, tiie fate of Fox is a small matter in comparison with the fate of the Klan, and that can hardly be affected by any legal technicalities. - If the organisation was properly described by its founder 1 as on the rocks six or seven weeks ago, the effect of the revelations made in .this trial must surely be that it is breaking up. The politicians of both parties will heave a profound sigh of relief if the Klan is really smashed, and it must at any rate be. robbed of most of its terrors.