Life — March 5, 1925 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THe second question inspired our readers to further flights of elo- quence, as indicated by published herewith, Many reasons for the Klan’s exis- tence were offered—including Ignorance, Greed, Patriotism, the primal instinct of se If- defense, a boyish affection for mummery, the laxity of law enforce- ment and the necessity for protecting American womanhood. Frequent ref- erence was made to the spirit of Wash- ington, Lincoln and P. T, Barnum. Answers were most numerous from those sections of the country where the Klan's power is greatest. The following answers, runners-up for the prize, are Honorably Men- tioned, and their authors are in line for the three major prizes to be awarded at the conclusion of the Contes: Boobs in Arms E are the people. Our ways are the right ways.” Who speaks thus? Every religious, social and political organization in ex- istence. The Klan is a group making the time-honored assertion, It is a hard-handed, soft-headed group, and (as always with such) it has soft-handed, hard-headed leaders. It is the booboisie organized and marching. The Klansmen are the lineal descend- ants of the followers of Peter the Her- mit and Joseph Smith, and when the bonfires of the present enthusiasm are burned out, they and their seed will be found in the train of yet other mounte- banks and bell-wethers, in quest of an- other bigots’ paradise. The poor boobs we have always with us. the answers H. L. Clark, 1833 Sixth St., Bay City, Mich. Justification HE Klan is the shadow cast by a great disillusionment. Like its fore- runner, sixty years ago, it sees the social organism threatened by men incapable of sustaining its traditions and alien to its spirit. To-day, as completely as when, with axe and rifle, the English-speaking white man cleared the wil- derness, the well-being of the community rests upon his Lire’s Question Contest Announcing the Winning Answer to Question Number Two: “Why is the Ku Klux Klan2” Tue Prize oF $50.00 1s AWARDED TO: R. S. Kellogg 18 Bayley ‘Ace., Yonkers, N.Y. For the following answer: ECAUSE it furnishes an ap- parently safe opportunity for the manifestation of an inferior- ity complex in an attempt to regulate the other fellow’s con- duct. Because racial and relig- ious animosities are among the most fundamental and_ persistent human traits and to these traits charlatans, demagogues and jin- goes have ever successfully ap- pealed. Because it is easier to go with the crowd on a half-truth than to stand alone on the whole truth, shoulders and those of his racial near-kin. Without them, its schools would sink to an ignorant parochialism, its libraries decay, its death-rate rise, its commerce dwindle, its higher life in every ficld die of inanition. What American idealism has had to give to men of other traditions has been offered freely, but after fifty years of experience it con- cludes, reluctantly but conclusively, that democracy is a biologic product, and that Providence in its wisdom, admittedly in- scrutable, has failed, in countless stances, to equip men for such responsi- bilities, as we conceive them. The Klan steps into the breach. Its intent is of the simplest—to exclude the unfit from that for which they are unfitted. E, M. Ho: , Buffalo, N.Y. in- $22 Delaware 4 Pots and Kettles HE Klan was instigated primarily to make it possible for a lot of Knights in sheet armor to assemble in a swamp at midnight and indulge their negroid passion for regalia and fetish worship, to NEXT WEEK—Announcement of the winning onswer to Question Number Three: “Shall we cancel the French War Debt?” In the St. Patrick's Number. satiate their Semitic desire for clannish- ness and belief in the bloody doctrine of “an eye for an eye,” and to satisfy their papist craving for mysticism and ritual- istic panoply; under the guise of hatred for all of these things. W. Thornton Martin, 7, t10 W. Chicago Ave., Chicago, Ii. In the Name of the Law HE Ku Klux Klan is the answer of an indignant and despairing public to the graft-ridden courts that contin- ually turn criminals loose, to prey again upon society with renewed confidence; but as desperate measures, however jus- tifiable they may seem to be, are likely to prove as bad as or worse than the evils they are intended to remedy, it is not surprising that the secrecy and ir- regularity of the Klan should have at tracted a class of people who recognize in it an opportunity to indulge, under the cloak of righteous endeavor, the base passions of personal revenge, race hatred and religious prejudice. The Klan is merely a part of the price we have to pay for permitting legal law- lessness to reign and justice to become a by-word, Room 22, Marie Snow, 712 E. Henderson Ave., Tampa, Fla, The Tom Sawyer Complex NDOUBTEDLY the main reason for the existence of the Klan is the fact that there are enough simps with the admission price, and enough shrewd men to exploit them. There is a market for mummery. Klan supplies the market. The Klan is no more harmful than amateur theatricals. If the members get their money’s worth of fun out of it, why not let them? The mask and robe are not intended to shield the wearer from punishment at the hands of the law. He hardly does anything except parade around anyway. The mask and robe are intended to give grown men a chance to do foolish things without looking foolish. Of course, The comicbooks.com