MORE THAN POLITICS

Small and comparatively unimportant states often cause more trouble than large and better behaved ones. Just at present Oklahoma is the "enfant terrible", and is suffering from an acute internal disorder which all the governor's horses and all the governor's men are attempting to make well again. But even if the governor should succeed temporarily, and even if the present crisis should be passed, there are symptoms of the same disorder in other parts of the country.

The question of whether Governor Walton's drastic measures are legal is one which is, for the present, comparatively unimportant. He has forbidden the state legislature to meet, and he has proclaimed martial law: but he has been backed by President Coolidge and has the Federal Government on his side. For the time being it is a fight between the governor, and the Ku Klux Klan, and it is the governor who has been forced to take extraordinary measures. He is not in the position in which Andrew Johnson found himself, where he must await passively the worst which the legislative body can do, for he is now the representative of the central government at Washington. This is a fact that he has taken great care to ascertain.

The central question is concerned with the attitude of the Klan. If they submit peaceably to all these military threats, if they act legally and quietly there is little doubt that they will gain in prestige, for Governor Walton's tactics are anything but popular in his own state. But if they try to override the law--or in this case the direct interdict of the President of the United States--they will lose whatever sympathy they have in the rest of the country. Their former acts in Oklahoma, which have largely brought about the present situation, have been of a nature to alienate public sentiment. But in other cases, such as in their reform measures in Portland City, they have accomplished much good.

For the present Governor Walton is unquestionably in the right, and all indications are that he will remain in office, despite the ill will of the legislators. If he acts moderately afterwards, suppressing all mob acts, but also enforcing the law more efficiently throughout the state, the whole fight between Klan and Federal power may be ended. A ruling such as that recently passed in Michigan, forbidding the use of masks, would do much good. But for the solution of the problem, sanity and moderation are more essential than extraordinary measures of any sort.