"I further charge that when in your printed literature you claim that your organization is the 'genuine original Klan,' this statement is a fraud historically and a fraud in principle. While you have--without any right whatever--appropriated to yourself the name, regalia, and certain nomenclature of the original Klan, your scheme is radically different in conception, in organization, and in purpose. A careful study, which I have made, of the Prescript of the original Klan and all available history and literature on the subject, reveals the fact that there is little, if anything, in common between the two organizations. Your false pretenses of 'genuineness' are therefore insults to the history, the traditions, and the entire record of the South. "Ever since your scheme has been actively propagated, there has been a wave of crime in the Southern States, consisting to a large extent of 'private regulations' of the public peace, committed by men who have gone about their respective communities wearing disguises and taking into their own hands the functions of prosecuting attorney, witnesses, judge, jury and executioner, in direct contravention to the Bill of Rights of the Federal and State constitutions. Men have been dragged from their beds at night, forcibly abducted on the streets and in their homes, arrested without warrant on the public streets, conveyed to secluded places, there to be flogged, tarred and feathered. In two instances helpless women, after being stripped of their clothing, have been similarly maltreated. In nearly every reported case, the perpetrators of these acts of lawlessness have worn disguises, described as 'masks and white robes,' which description correspond convincingly with the official regalia of the 'Invisible Empire.' In three specific cases, acts of lawlessness have been so openly and flagrantly committed by members of the 'Ku Klux Klan,' that you have been compelled to take official cognizance. In these three instances where responsibility has been fixed, it was very evident that the illegal oath and the secret teachings of your 'Invisible Empire' were construed by your dupes as granting a license to engage in secret regulation of the peace by means of anonymous warnings, threats, intimidations, abduction, the whip, and the use of tar and feathers. Having studied your scheme, both from the inside and the outside, I have no doubt whatever that practically all of these reported outrages were committed by members of your organization. If it were proven, however, that your 'citizens' were not _prima facie_ responsible, at the same time there exists a moral responsibility, because when one group of people is permitted to go about in disguise, it places the community at the mercy of any group