THAT THE TIMES is Catholic—that it is fighting not the Ku-Klux Klan, but the Protestants—is the declaration from Klan quarters as a result of the attack being made by The Indianapolis Times against the Klan.
It is the same declaration that always comes when the Klan is under fire.
Now—
Just as a matter of information:
It so happens that every stock-holder (and there are no bond-holders) in The Times is Protestant.
It further happens that at the present time every corporate official and every operating manager of The Times is a Protestant.
It chances, therefore, that every individual who has anything to do with the editorial or business policy of The Times is a Protestant.
That such is the case is mentioned solely because the fact may serve to clear away the smoke-screen of misunderstanding that the Klan is seeking to throw around the action and the motives of The Times.
THE PURPOSES of The Times in making its fight against the Klan are simple.
There is nothing mysterious or subtle about them.
The Times merely believes that no secret order whose proclaimed purpose is to control the civil government should be tolerated.
It believes that SUCH A PURPOSE, wherever it may arise, IS HIGHLY DANGEROUS.
Whether it be the Ku-Klux Klan, the Knights of Columbus, the Masons, the Elks, the Eagles, the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, the Phi-Gams, the Alpha Delts or the Sons and Daughters of I-Will-Arise—when a lodge or a club or a church begins to indulge itself in the ambition to run the State, then The Times unit fight that organization in that ambition as it now is fighting the Ku-Klux Klan.
THE KLAN avowedly seeks and proposes to dominate public office in Indiana.
It seeks and proposes to establish a super-government.
It seeks and proposes to erect in Indiana an Invisible Empire which IN SECRET CHAMBER shall hand down, through the public officials for whose election it has been responsible, government for all the people.
The sinister menace in that purpose it seems to The Times should be evident to all.
The consequences of such a purpose put into actual effect would be so far reaching and so full of danger the Times would consider itself worse than cowardly if it did not do every thing in its power to check that purpose before it is too late.
We are now living in a democracy.
Centuries of struggle and rivers of blood secured for us the privilege of representative government.
The bitter battle against imperial oppression and royal intolerance threads its way back through the ages, and Runnymede should be more than a name to us who live today.
BUT NOW in new guise the ambition of empire comes again—this time an Invisible Empire.
And under the pretense of Americanism it would plant itself once more in the citadel of power.
That in final analysis is what the Ku-Klux Klan means.
And that is what we, as voters, should consider when we go to the polls Tuesday next.
A vote for Jackson is a vote for the Invisible Empire.
A vote for McCulloch is a vote against.
The Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, IN, November 1, 1924