Architecture is a fine art, but it is not a private art, nor has it ever been a quiet art. A man cannot practice it by himself in a corner of his library or by brooding over it in his music room. Carpenters and contractors and plumbers, picked up at random, can construct any simple building (even a factory); almost any intelligent man who can use a square, saw, and hammer can frame a wooden house, shingle its roof, and nail on its siding; such structures are not architecture and have only a remote similarity to it. For architecture is an art; and it is a public art; as such the architect is a public figure and works in the thick of things. Everybody believes himself entitled to have his say about any new church, school house, college, courthouse, state capitol, museum, monument, and half the time he says "no" to it, and oftentimes he says it vociferously, and nobody could count the architects who have spent half their time battling wrathful committees or fighting back at sneering newspaper editors; the career; of Roebling, Sullivan, Corbett, Hood, Pope, Wright and such men in our own day was a continuous battle.
Philistines who hate culture in general, and who are at actio e enmity with the fine arts, feel as they do because if culture is real and is true they themselves can have no standing in it. These mediocre persons lampoon artists with jibes and cartoons, and they picture them as thin, ineffectual, loose handed, long haired creatures with large and mournful eyes. The cartoon is a silly one but only a close reading of the history of the arts can show a man how silly it really is; because history proves that the fine art have always been daring, pugnacious, aggressive; and thousands of biographies of artists (which the mediocrities never read) are life stories of men in the midst of foes, enemies, and opponents, who battled, and bled, and oftentimes were killed; and the fine arts have as long a roll of heroes and martyrs as war or religion.
The Operative Freemasons, who were the architects of the Middle Ages, were not only not an exception to this rule but had to do more battling with foes and enemies than artists in almost any other period. Perhaps it was because they had a monopoly of their art, for it was a cornerstone of the gild system within which they operated that each gild had a monopoly of the work done in its own craft, and there is always a large amount of enmity to a monopoly, whether it is a good one or a bad one, because it leaves so many men without any voice in it. Certainly the Freemasons had a monopoly of architecture! they kept everybody away with an armed guard, and they taught nothing of their methods and secrets except to their own apprentices, and so as in other gilds and craft fraternities these apprentices were bound to keep what they had learned to themselves under oath, and on the threat of severe penalties.
Sentimental Masonic writers have drawn pictures of those Medieval Freemasons as a single, mystic, devout brotherhood; the historian Hope drew a picture of them walking down a country road at dusk, their arms around each other's shoulders, singing songs of brotherhood; it may be that such idyllic scenes occurred but if so they did not occur often; the history of themselves which they wrote into their own records when added to the history about them which was written into chronicles and borough records, gives us a picture of a wholly different kind.
The Masons often went on strike; more than once they tore a building down when their employers tried to "beat" them out of their wages; when the kings tried to lower their wages they stopped work; many times their own Lodge building was burned down in at least three known cases the mob which burned one of them was led by a priest. Among themselves the Operative Freemasons were peaceable and quiet men, and had some drastic laws to keep them so; but their craft did not have a peaceable and quiet time.
The old picture of the Middle Ages as an Age of Faith, as a quiet and uninterrupted interval in a period of history full of troubles and wars is a myth, and historians long have known that it was; it was more like a hurly burly, and because they did public work, and oftentimes worked for bishops and lords and kings who were not themselves very popular Operative Masons then were at the focus of the hurly burly. Always they had plenty of enemies and foes; Anti-Masonry went along with Masonry, and one is as ancient as the other. Because this is true no Mason ought to feel a shock when he discovers that the Fraternity has enemies and foes now, nor should he feel that there is something wrong with his Lodge or his Grand Lodge when he discovers (as he will) that the Fraternity has many enemies who would like to see it abolished; there is nothing new in this state of affairs, nor accidental; there have always been Anti-Masons and there always will be.
Now and then a timid, or thin skinned, or ultra conservative member tries to persuade his fellow members to keep still about this fact, or even to pretend that it is not true: "let sleeping dogs lie" (how often are such dogs really asleep?) he counsels, and thinks that the less said about Anti-Masonry the better. The Fraternity itself does not agree with him, and it never has. With its usual candor and good sense it forthrightly declares that it has foes and enemies, and it provides within itself (and with equal good sense) a large number of measures to protect itself against them. There are too many of these measures for listing and describing in one paragraph but a few of the more typical ones can be given, and with these as a clue any reader can go on to recall the others. A Petitioner is thoroughly scrutinized and investigated not only to see if he possesses the qualifications but also to make sure that he will not turn out to be a Trojan horse or a Fifth Columnist to bring trouble and dissention into a Lodge the history of European Freemasonry is full of instances of foes introduced by this ancient scheme of a Fifth Column. The Obligation is not only most carefully worked out to cover every point but is severe, and it is backed by penalties also severe; and the whole apparatus of admonition, censure, reprimand, trial, suspension, and expulsion is designed to keep trouble makers out, or to put trouble makers out, because it is the trouble maker inside who furnishes opportunities and weapons to trouble makers on the outside. The Lodge meets behind closed doors, with a guard on the inside and another on the outside of it. The business transacted in a Communication is under the rule of secrecy and may not be reported or discussed with non-members. The Esoteric Work may nowhere be reported, spoken, or written. The Lodge permits no non-Mason to pass its door when it is in session, and it matters not who he be, not even if he is Sheriff, Governor, or President. As for the Sublime Degree itself it will take on a new meaning and stand in a new light if a student of it will view it from this standpoint of Anti-Masonry. Why should a Fraternity devoted to harmony, peace, fraternalism, charity, good will have foes and enemies? The question can be best answered by another question: why should any religion, church, government, people, institution have foes and enemies?
The Fraternity engages in no quarrels or brawls, and does not lift up its voice in the streets; it respects itself and therefore holds its position with dignity; furthermore it respects its own enemies (most of them) and neither despises nor holds them in contempt because they are in conflict with it, because it knows that honorable men may be in conflict with each other. If a religion believes itself to be wholly and exclusively true it is logically in conflict with other religions. The constitutional laws of a government cannot tolerate interferences from the constitutional laws of another government. Any organization which stands on principles of its own inevitably opposes a competing organization with opposite principles. Men have the inherent right of free association, and will engage in armed rebellion if that right is interfered with; but the fact that association is free unavoidably results in hundreds of associations with conflicting aims or purposes. Freemasonry is a free association; it is founded on principles of its own and is always willing to perish rather than to abrogate or revise them; it does not expect, and has no right to expect, that it can be immune from the rule of the world, and knows that if other free associations have opposite principles they will be logically, and therefore necessarily, at enmity with it. If they actively oppose themselves to it, it must oppose itself to them, and even though it does not openly quarrel with them, or go out and do violent battle with them.
The large number of Anti-Masonic activities about which there are many chapters among the thousand chapters in the history of the Fraternity have been not vulgar quarrels but an inevitable conflict between one principle and an opposed principle, between the Masonic teaching and an opposite teaching. This is the correct definition and the true doctrine about Anti-Masonry; except for a few occasional incidents, seldom of importance, it means nothing other than that any society or association which has principles and teachings opposed to the principles and teachings of Freemasonry, is logically and necessarily Anti-Masonic. How this definition works out can be shown by some three or four typical cases:
Clement XII issued in 1738 A.D. the first of many Papal Bulls aimed at the abolition of Freemasonry. It is difficult for any man of sound mind to see by what right these Popes took such action, because neither they nor any other set of men can speak or act for the world-Freemasonry, an American would say, is none of their business; nevertheless Clement XII acted consistently with the established principles of his church because three hundred years before (in 1326 A.D.) the Council of Avignon had excommunicated all "free associations"; and centuries before that date, and in a number of General Councils, the church had condemned free associations. Freemasonry is in law and by definition, as well as by the nature of its own Landmarks, a free association, therefore a conflict as between it and the Roman Church has always been unavoidable, and always will be because it is a conflict in principles.
In 1799 A.D. the Parliament of Great Britain enacted a law which it entitled The Combinations Act. It was, as the coffeehouses described it at the time, "a most peculiar law," but the word "peculiar" was not strong enough; the Act was not a law as any jurisconsult in the world would define "law," but was nothing but a fiat arbitrarily issued and backed up with the threat of force; it was a mere Legislative Edict, which means that the Legislature itself violated the law in the very act of enacting its socalled "law." The occasion for this act of legislative lawlessness was plain to everybody; in Ireland were many secret and conspirational political societies, there were a few of them in England; and in both Islands the Orange Society was everywhere making headway. To abolish the two or three societies it considered to be dangerous the Parliament abolished all secret societies-like the man in Charles Lamb's story who burned down his house in order to roast his pig. The law was still born, but it remained on the books for a few years, and while it did the British Government was technically Anti-Masonic because if the law had been enforced it would have abolished Freemasonry.
After the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo the more powerful of the States involved began a long Congress at Vienna, which turned out to be not so much a Congress as a league of nations, and officially or unofficially ruled Europe for years. To implement the scheme of rule, Metternich, its architect and its leader, devised the since famous Triple (or Holy) Alliance, consisting of Austria, Prussia, and Russia; this was afterwards replaced by the Grand Alliance. (The Monroe Doctrine was our bulwark of defense against these Alliances.) What with Metternich, Talleyrand, the Two Alliances, and the Congress taken together there was set up in Europe a political and religious system which rested on the dogma that rulers rule by divine right. Metternich himself, once the question came round for his attention, saw that the principles of the Holy Alliance were in conflict with the principles of Freemasonry, therefore he sent out word that Freemasonry must be destroyed-it is for this reason that he may be adjudged the most powerful and the most successful Anti-Mason in history; and if his system had survived (it broke down in the 1840's) not one Lodge in Europe would have survived with it. It was one more instance of an inevitable conflict; the principles of the Holy Alliance and the principles of the Fraternity were in conflict; and they came into conflict of themselves because few of Metternich's colleagues had any personal quarrel with it, certainly not Metternich himself who was too much the gentleman to quarrel with anybody.
The Anti-Masonic Crusade in the United States which began in 1826 A.D. as an aftermath of the disappearance of William Morgan and the accusation that the Masons in his Lodge in Batavia, N. Y., had murdered him, would have been a Comedy of Errors if its violence had not turned it into a Comedy of Terrors, for the whole of it, as Anti-Masons themselves afterwards confessed, grew up out of a mistake (or blunder) about a matter of fact. Thurlow Weed, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore and the other Anti-Masonic leaders averred that Freemasonry is a secret and conspirational society which aims to destroy the National Government, and at the same time is a secret and conspirational atheistic society which aims to destroy Christianity. Am Mason who reads these sentences can judge for himself how weirdly mistaken those charges were, because Freemasonry did not alter itself an iota as a result of this Crusade. The AntiMasons raided some thousands of Lodge properties; read hundreds of Minute Books; analyzed every word in rites, symbols, and ceremonies they could find; and combed through the private lives of hundreds of Worshipful Masters and Grand Masters. When there was nothing more left for them to find they admitted (because they had to admit it) that they had made a blunder of epic proportions in a matter of fact, and history will continue to laugh at them as long as they are remembered.
Freemasonry began in Russia within only a few years after it was first planted in Western Europe, and it had there a long history which was checkered or broken at times but not more often than other things were under the Czars. But from the beginning of the Soviet regime it has been completely obliterated. This is a great loss because Russia occupies one-sixth of the habitable surface of the earth. Soviets are very old in Russia, for they antedate even Genghis Khan; Communism is as old as the steppes themselves; the Soviet regime is therefore not peculiar in being Communistic or in using soviets, but it is the first system in Russia or in any other land where the two have been combined to the exclusion of every other social or political method; there are small soviets and large soviets, thousands of them, but their peculiarity is that they are not used by the government, but are the government, and no soviet can exist except as a department or agency of government, or as it is controlled and inspected by an officer of the government. There is no room anywhere in this network for a free association, therefore the soviet system automatically excludes Masonic Lodges. Whether it will always do so or not it is impossible to predict, but if ever Masonic Lodges are permitted again they will not function as agencies of government or submit to inspection and regulation by government agencies because if a Lodge did so it would no longer be Masonic.
When Mussolini established Fascism in Italy one of his earliest official acts was to order Masonic leaders jailed in prisons or sent to the Lipari Islands; his "toughs" then ranged the country to mob and club Masons, to destroy Lodge rooms and buildings, steal Masonic property, and the Duce himself brought the AntiMasonic terror to a head by offering Italian Masons a choice between two alternatives, renouncing Masonry or imprisonment and possibly death. As Fascism extended itself into Spain, Germany, Belgium, Poland, Rumania, Holland, and France, and had begun to extend itself into Britain (where Moseley claimed nearly a million members), it everywhere either destroyed Freemasonry or else began a war upon it Petain at Vichy was as Anti-Masonic as Hitler in Berlin. From the beginning of Mussolini's AntiMasonry until the fall of Berlin, and including persecutions by Hitler's "yellow Aryan" friends, the Japanese, some 100,000 men became martyrs of Masonry. And why? Because the principles of Fascism came into head on collision with the principles of Masonry where a Lodge is, fascism is not; where fascism is, a Lodge is not. It was the most bloody and awesomely tragic persecution through which Freemasonry had ever passed during the stormtroubled centuries; but the Fraternity has a long memory, and there is more than one sense in which "the strong grip of the Lion's Paw" "can raise from the dead."
It is therefore clear that they are mistaken
who have pictured Anti-Masonry in the terms of quarreling, or
as if it were something new, and as being possibly in some sense
shameful to admit. The Fraternity is not an upstart from yesterday,
or even from the day before yesterday; the world long ago accorded
it a large and an established place, and it needs not to apologize
for its existence, and if any man should chance to wish that it
did not exist he can continue to wish, and much good it will do
him. It knows its own mind; it is positive and affirmative; it
has its own purposes and will neither step aside nor back down
if it is opposed: and as for its Landmarks, its principles, and
its teachings it will compound them for no price, and prefers
non-existence to compromise; and though not belligerent it is
never afraid, and not even the falling of the heavens could break
down its fortitude. Where there are so many men and so many minds,
so many political regimes, religions, races, and cultures, it
cannot hope ever to find itself not in conflict with some one
of them, at least not opposed in principle in a world where there
are so many movements, and crusades, and creeds, and parties.
All of these which is only another way of saying that no Mason
should ever let his heart be troubled by these oppositions, past
or present, for Ant-Masonry is a necessary and normal feature
in the Masonic scene.
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