The Klan today, because of the position it has come to fill, is by far the strongest movement recorded for the defense and fulfillment of Americanism. It has a membership of millions, the support of millions more. If there be any truth in the statement that the voice of the people is the voice of God, then we hold a Divine commission. Our finances are sound as they have been for years; we permit no great accumulation, but have reduced our fees when we found them producing more than enough to carry on our crusade.

Our ritual is still incomplete. We have been too busy getting our army into shape and our crusade started, to perfect the higher degrees, but this is being done. Our first, and so far only largely used degree, inculcates and symbolizes loyalty to America, to Protestantism, to law and order and to the Klan. The second, just coming into use, emphasizes patriotism. The third will center around Protestantism, and the fourth and last around race pride, loyalty and responsibility. It may be added that members of other orders who have seen such ritualism as we already use, agree that it is unexcelled in solemnity, dignity and beauty.

One of the outstanding principles of the Klan is secrecy. We have been much criticized for it, and accused of cowardice, though how any sane person can allege cowardice against men who stood unarmed while rioters beat and shot them down, as Klansmen were beaten and shot at Carnegie and other places, we cannot understand. Our secrecy is, in fact, necessary for our protection so long as the bitter intolerance and fanatic persecution lasts. Until the Klan becomes strong in a community, individual members have often found themselves in danger of loss of work, business, property and even life. There is also the advantage in secrecy that it gives us greater driving force, since our enemies are handicapped in not knowing just what, where or how great is the strength we can exert.

Both these reasons for secrecy will grow less in time, but it can safely be predicted that the Klan will never officially abandon its secrecy. The mask, by the way, is not a part of our secrecy at all, but of our ritual, and can never be abandoned. The personal secrecy occasionally disappears, as the Klan gains strength,

from the zeal of members who wish to work openly, whereby the Klan can be seen emerging as Masonry did a century ago.

One more charge against the Klan is worth noting: that we are trying to cure prejudice by using new and stronger prejudice, to end disunity by setting up new barriers, to speed Americanization by discriminations and issues which are un-American. This is a plausible charge, if the facts alleged were true, for it is certain that prejudice is no cure for prejudice, nor can we hope to promote Americanism by violating its principles.

But the Klan does not stimulate prejudice, nor has it raised race or religious issues, nor violated the spirit of Americanism in any way. We simply recognize facts, and meet the situation they reveal, as it must be met. Non-resistance to the alien invasion, and ostrich-like optimism have already brought us to the verge of ruin. The time has come for positive action. The Klan is open to the same charge of creating discord that lies against any people who, under outside attack, finally begin resistance when injuries have become intolerable—it is blamable to that extent, but no more. There can be no hope of curing our evils so long as it is possible for leaders of alien groups to profit by them, and by preventing assimilation. Our first duty is to see to it that no man may grow rich or powerful by breeding and exploiting disloyalty.

The future of the Klan we believe in, though it is still in the hands of God and of our own abilities and consecration as individuals and as a race. Previous movements of the kind have been short-lived, killed by internal jealousies and personal ambitions, and partly, too, by partial accomplishment of their purposes. If the Klan falls away from its mission, or fails in it, perhaps even if it succeeds-certainly whenever the time comes that it is not doing needed work-it will become a mere derelict, without purpose or force. If it fulfills its mission, its future power and service are beyond calculation so long as America has any part of her destiny unfulfilled. Meantime we of the Klan will continue, as best we know and as best we can, the crusade for Americanism to which we have been providentially called.

HIRAM WESLEY EVANS.

THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

BY CHARLES H. SHERRILL

ONCE upon a time, into a small back court of Venice, the stork brought a tiny baby, destined one day to become even a greater traveler than that kindly bird. Go back to the inner, second Corte del Milion, behind the Teatro Malibran, and you will see a much altered medieval tower, two of whose Romanesque arches are all that remains of Marco Polo's birthplace. He lived from about 1254 till 1324, and was the first known white man to penetrate "Far Cathay". Not only did he survive his extensive travels throughout all that vast unknown territory, but also and for many years served as Viceroy of one of China's provinces.

To Marco Polo's distinction as the white pioneer of the Yellow Man's empire, must be added another: He never talked any nonsense about undertaking the White Man's Burden! He quite frankly urged others of his race to go where he had gone because it was profitable. He said nothing about the duty of the White Race to uplift those of darker skins: he left that for us moderns to proclaim.

The date of his return from two decades of profitable residence in the Far East was 1292, just two centuries before 1492, an easy date for Americans to remember. There is much more connection between those two dates than would at first appear. Of all his interesting tales brought home to Venice, none were more alluring to that race of enterprising merchants than his account of a certain island called Zipangu, lying off the coast of China, of whose riches and desirability he could not say enough. Zipangu was and is Japan.

Nearly two centuries later, inspired by Marco Polo's and later tales of Zipangu, another Italian (this time a Genoese) sailed westward with three Spanish ships under the Spanish flag, to find that fabled island. This later Italian, Christopher Columbus, by his epoch-making voyage toward Zipangu, transformed the earth

from a flat map into a globe. Vastly more momentous still, his addition of two continents to the known world started the white man to overrun the earth.

From the day that Columbus sailed westward from Cadiz, the white man has never stopped his determined and relentless expansion. He has obtained undisputed possession of the whole new hemisphere of the Americas, as well as of the continent and countless isles of Australasia. He has acquired all of Africa, of the Near East, of India, and occupied all of that northern half of Asia which we call Siberia. In southern Asia, the English have spread on from India down over the Malay Penninsula, and also up over the lofty Himalayas into Thibet. The French took possession of that huge southern district of China called Tonkin, half again as large as France, with forty million non-white inhabitants, while to the south the Dutch did likewise to Java and Sumatra with their thirty-five millions. And we Americans, although not with deliberate intent but by the chances of war, find ourselves the overlords of eight million Filipinos.

Is it any wonder that the Far East finally awoke to this onward rush of the White Peril? Or that Japan drove back the Russians from the China Sea, so as not to have white warships dominating those nearby waters from that Gibraltar-like base, Port Arthur, or holding the Korean side of Tsu-shima Straits, just across from Shimonoseki?

Much has been said and written of the White Man's Burdenof our race's duty to extend our civilization over territory belonging to the yellow or red or black man so as to better the condition of those aborigines. But is that true? Who shall decide whether such a change really benefits those peoples-they or we? Has not the time come to make frank admission that the "White Man's Burden" is after all only a smug phrase coined to cover exploitation of weaker races for the benefit of the white one?

When Bishop Brent and his American associates attempted last year at Geneva, in the home of the League of Nations, to effect a reduction in the growth of the opium poppy, they were opposed by all those European Powers whose nationals profit from opium production in those lands of the Far East seized by white Europeans. The altruistic efforts of these distinguished

Americans failed completely. Those European Powers declined to relinquish that particular portion of the White Man's Burden, nor have they reduced their subsidies to encourage cultivation of the opium poppy by Asiatics in those lands for the benefit of white merchants handling that trade. All the foregoing is well known. Nothing is further from the writer's mind than a desire to urge that it should not be the acclaimed privilege of the White Man to do all in his power to aid other races. He only desires to protest against the world's opinion that this justifies the occupation of territory belonging to those other races. The port of Guayaquil was cleared of yellow fever by the brains and energy of a citizen of the United States, but that afforded no reason for the seizure by us of that port. The White Man's Privilege of Service is far removed from the White Man's Burden policy of territorial seizure.

All around the world we are beginning to hear the voice of the Native raised against the long accepted doctrine of the White Man's Burden. After having traveled extensively around the Pacific Ocean I can testify that there is as much unrest among the natives across that great water as there is among the tribes in North Africa and the Near East. What have we whites ever done in medical service to the islands of the Pacific to compensate for the hideous wrong done them when Captain Cook's sailors spread a dreadful venereal disease, until then unknown in those sunlit seas?

The cry of "Asia for the Asiatics" is seldom heard and but little understood on our side of the Pacific. In Asia, it represents a great and deep-seated movement, and some of their wise leaders express surprise that Americans cannot realize that their beloved Monroe Doctrine is the world's only exact prototype of "Asia for the Asiatics".

"Yes," says a European poppy grower or merchant, now forced upon the defensive, "but what about the American flag in the Philippines?" To that there is a complete answer. In the first place, our fleet did not go there to seize territory. Admiral Dewey's orders were to seek out and destroy the Spanish fleetnothing more and nothing less. That fleet happened to be found in Manila Bay, and was there destroyed. But that did not