A.P.P.P.P.A.

Last week, William H. Anderson* announced the foundation of A. P. P. P. A. (American Prohibition Protestant Patriotic Protective Alliance). What i it? It is an "organization," but it has no members and no charter--not being incorporated. It has no oath. It keeps no books. All its financial transactions are oral. All contributions to it are in the form of "outright personal gifts to William H. Anderson, its founder and general secretary, to be used in any way he sees fit." The object of this strange type of organization is to make the four P's Alliance "persecution proof and uninvestigable."

What is to be the work that Mr. Anderson "sees fit" to carry on? Mr. Anderson explained volubly, but without particulars. His program is more or less conveyed by the following statement :

"The Protestant denominations, aside from the purely religious and evangelical considerations, have been, the past 25 years, primarily interested in prohibition, but with a vague general interest in patriotic subjects. The Protestant fraternal orders, on the other hand, have been primarily interested in what is included in the term 'patriotic' with a general interest in the prohibition problem. The function of this new alliance is to interpret each to the other so that these two, largely independent, parallel streams of moral and civic power, may both be utilized in turning all wheels that grind a grist of Americanism common to both.

The to organ both." of the four P's Alliance is to be The Fellowship Forum, a paper published from Washington by a number of 33DEG Masons which prints the news of all the leading Protestant fraternal orders" and has for some time been favorable to the Ku Klux Klan which falls in that classification. Soon after this news came out there was a report that Mr. Anderson had been in Washington holding long conferences with K. K. K. leaders that they had rejected an offer of an alliance with him. Of this report Mr. Anderson remarked: "It's a fine lot of nonsense."

When a reporter pointed out that this was not a denial, he responded: "I think that covers it." The question now arises whether "Invisible Empire" is to be supplemented by an intangible alliance dedicated to the four P's.

*He was for some time Superintendent of the New York State Anti-Saloon League until he was accused of peculating its funds, and convicted of third degree forger for "juggling its books." Having served nine months of a year's sentence, he was paroled and is at [remainder of text cut off]