“KAMELIA”

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 July 1923, Page 8

“KAMELIA”

, AVOMEN’S KU-KLUX-KLAN,. The “Emperor” of the Ku-Klux-Klan, William J. Simmons, has to all appearances re-established his supremacy by successfully inaugurating Kamelia as a women’s branch of the Klan, states the New York correspondent of the “Daily Mail.” Kamelia has just held at Atlanta its first annual convention. AVomen delegates attended from all parts of the United States. They were exhorted by their “Emperor” to mobilise against the perils confronting the Protestant white population of the United States. These perils were luridly described as typically illustrated in New York, where, the “Emperor” observed, there are within a radius of

19 miles more than 7,000,000 people * congested. He proceeded: “Of this enormous centralised population only 1,100,000 are native-born, white Protestant Americans. The vast majority of the others are of , every land and of every tongue and every creed. They speak 37 different foreign languages. None of them in , their homes or in their communities speaks the English language. “After listening to its babel of tongues, after feeling its seething restlessness, an eminent social economist recently turned away from New York with the observation that its future could be seen faithfully depicted in the dust and desolation of Petrograd.” The “Emperor” gave a picture no less terrifying of the Pacific Coast, where, 'he said, the Japanese were establishing an asylum as a refuge against the day of China’s wrath, and of the Southern States where more than 11,000,000 negroes presented an 1 insoluble problem. 1 He ended by urging the women of ( America to join in repelling “the in- 1 vasion of America by hordes of 1 alien and undemocratic elements, incapable of self government, and in ' insisting that immigration shall be , arrested and the foreign elements already in the country properly and J scientifically distributed.” He an- 7 nounced that “a great American uni- 1 versify” was to be founded at Atlanta by Kamelia and the Ku-Klux- c Klan.