"Organization is said to have been effected of a band of men to combat the alleged activities of the Ku Klux Klan, in South East Texas, with the announced intention of conducting open warfare against the members of the Klan if necessary 'because officers have not the nerve or desire to place under arrest its members who have violated the law.' "First announcement of the new organization was set forth yesterday in a communication addressed to the Ku Klux Klan and sent to a local newspaper for publication. 'Squads of special service men,' the notice stated, 'have been appointed to locate members of the Klan.' It added that summary punishment would be inflicted upon any who are found. The communication said in part: "'We have formed a club, or mob, you may call it, of more than one hundred fearless men and we are going to stop you people with hot lead and hot steel at the first opportunity, and that will not be far off. We have sworn vengeance on such people and will shoot down like a mad dog men whom we learn to be members of the Klan.'" Some of the newspapers of Texas have fearlessly taken a stand against the widespread epidemic of masked violence, even going so far as to charge them directly to the Ku Klux Klan. Notable among these has been the _Houston Chronicle_. In an editorial printed in August, 1921, under the heading "Law, or Secret Cult," it said: "Once more the nation comes to a parting of the ways. "The issue is clearly defined. No one but the unimaginative can misunderstand it. "Constituted authority must prevail, or we are in for a reign of masked and irresponsible terror. "The fine phrases with which apologies for the Ku Klux Klan defend it fall flat before what happened to that woman in Tanaha and that other woman in Birmingham. "'Law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear,' they declare, but what does that amount to when any citizen can be accused, seized and violently used without a hearing? "Why do we bother about trial by jury, if the evidence of an angry and impulsive mob is sufficient to convict? "Why have we built up a complicated system of justice, except to protect indicted citizens? "'Those eyes that see everything' and 'those ears that hear everything' have evidently missed the Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. "Once more they would thrust us back on the evidence of passion, and conviction by emotion. "Once more they would rob the defendant of his right to be heard, to summons witnesses, to appeal to an impartial tribunal. "Once more they would have punishment decided upon and inflicted by a council that cannot be held accountable.