The old liberal principles of free speech, religious liberty, racial equality before the law and obedience to the law itself until it is altered by the will of the majority, is being attacked from both wings on the Left and Right. The Swastika or “Hackenkreuz” societies in Germany and Austria, becoming very powerful and aggressive, have declared war against the Jews, and vengeance against France. In Hungary the persecution of Jews is a passionate article of faith among those who support the present dictatorship. In the United States of America the Ku Klux Klan defies the very spirit of liberty and law which inspired the American constitution and preaches Intolerance as its creed—intolerance of Jews, intolerance of the Negro Race, intolerance of Catholics, intolerance of political labour. It is a secret society which seems to me in violent conflict with all the idealism stirring in the soul of America. If it is not checked or killed by public opinion it will certainly lead to social conflict in the United States of very grave consequences. The argument of the Ku Klux Klansmen that they stand for purity in politics, the old traditions of American character menaced by the tyranny and corruption of Irish politicians, Jewish financiers and Labour revolutionaries, seems to me no defence of their methods or their principles. It is not by defiance of the law that they will exact obedience to the law. It is not by setting up a secret government that they will destroy Tammany which is also a secret government. It is not by spreading a propaganda of hate against the Jewish race—which has been greatly loyal to American ideals and by its genius has brought great wealth in art, music and literature as well as in dollars to the United States—that the gospel of Christianity will be more faithfully observed. It is not by burning Catholic Churches that Christ will be served. It is not by lynch law against negroes or any other class of American citizens that the United States is going to give a spiritual lead to the world or improve its own state of civilisation. All that is a hark-back to barbarity and not a stride forward to a more civilised world. It is the revival of cruelty which we want to slay with other qualities of the beast in us. It is the spirit of “Prussianism” against which we were supposed to be fighting in the great war.