The Red Rovers
440 THE RED ROVERS 'T* NIMROD McKINNEY, "Grand Chief of the ¦*• • Orient, Grand Chief of the Philippine Islands, President and General Manager of the PhilippineAmerican Company of...
...What would be more interesting and profitable to know would be the exact status, affiliations and plan of the "group of Americans of wealth and culture" who have taken the trouble to incorporate him in "California, etc.," and to launch him and his order upon the Philippine Islands with the light-heartedness of the experimentalist in natural science who once let loose a buck and doe rabbit in good standing upon Australia's shores...
...Even its latest and most virulent example (founded, by the way, largely to discourage Grand Chief T. Nimrod McKinney's aspirations to be regarded as a man and a brother) has not yet won its battle with public ridicule...
...Meantime our own impression is that the Red Rovers of the Philippine Islands will bear careful watching...
...One is not surprised to hear that the ranks of his order are "attracting thousands" of the younger native element, and that a point has been reached causing concern to the Catholic clergy...
...440 THE RED ROVERS 'T* NIMROD McKINNEY, "Grand Chief of the ¦*• • Orient, Grand Chief of the Philippine Islands, President and General Manager of the PhilippineAmerican Company of California, etc.," and titular potentate of the "Red Rovers," is a gentleman of color—and one does not have to be Octavus Roy Cohen to visualize him with considerable accuracy...
...Exporting the secret fraternal order to countries still primitive and still used to getting their moral lessons in more definite shape, is a risky experiment...
...The sentiments it breathes have grown vapid through sheer repetition, the ray of tolerance with which it enlightens the aboriginal darkness of the Philippine mind is "of purest ray serene...
...There is not a program that seems to call for a title recalling the buccaneers, or an efficient hierarchy that most American men of culture (to say nothing of wealth) last used when they played Indians on back-lots...
...The machinery of oaths, passwords, regalia, and initiations, does not do much harm in a community where a tradition of law and some saving sense of humor act as public safeguards...
...I wish all men to feel that I am their brother, Jew or Mohammedan" . . . "Every religion was founded for the purpose of human uplift and enlightenment...
...While even in benighted Manila there must be students in a position to correct the statement that "every religion was founded for human uplift...
...What is a plaything in America might very easily become something else in her dependencies...
...Some were founded for human downfall, and did a pretty good job...
...But, dropped into the midst of a people neither civilized nor contented, such things are about as much in place as a box of strikeanywhere matches in a T. N. T. factory...
...Such literature as has been issued by the Red Rovers does not, on the face of it, seem to call for alarm...
...It is perhaps too much to ask that the secret fraternal order should be placed where Jules Ferry once placed anti-clericalism—on the prohibited export list...
Vol. 2 • September 1925 • No. 19
