Masons

The tiled door of a Manhattan auditorium closed secretively last week. Behind it 2,000 men, many of them foreigners, performed a mystic ceremony.

After partaking in the ceremony, representatives from England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Mexico, Rumania, and Jugoslavia went on a sight-seeing trip to avoid hearing a judge from Palmyra, N. Y. read for three hours from a list of amendments to the order's constitution. One amendment was a prohibition of smoking during the mystic rites.

Occasion for this and other similar meetings in New York last week was the 150th anniversary of the Grand Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons of New York State. While not the first "regular" Lodge established in North America, the New York unit was among first to have its charter renewed from London after the Revolution; it is the biggest in the world, with 1,026 lodges, 347,000 members.

Free. World Freemasonry began, according to impartial historical calculations, with the building of the great medieval cathedrals in Great Britain.* It was a trade guild of freemen, distinguished from medieval serfs. It was distinguished from other guilds because the masons-- stonecutters and stonesetters--had to travel about, wherever a cathedral was building. Freemasons would set up near the works a lodge wherein to serve meals and prepare their stones. To these lodges no persons were admitted but freemasons initiated in the craft's mysteries, which included not only sure means of identification but technical secrets. Scottish and Irish lodges were formed, remain distinct type parents of lodges everywhere today. Minutes and "charges" to neophytes were written down, the date of the earliest preserved being approximately fixed at 1390 A.D.

The Word. For more than 500 years The Word, the secret of the order, has been unviolated. However, observers suspect that The Word is no more than trade mathematics, as expressed in the title chosen by the 18th Century French Mathematician Gaspard Monge, no Freemason tattler, who wrote about "Descriptive Geometry, or the Art & Sciece of Masonic Symbolism."

Accepted. As they spread their mutual aid, the Masons became powerful. Outsiders, including nobility, sought admission. Masonry required them to believe in a Supreme Architect, to pass certain mental and moral tests. By 1620 there were "Accepted Masons," as well as free, practicing Masons, in England. Bit by bit the accepted members predominated in the old Guild. Up grew military, philosophical and all sorts of lodges. These facilitated Masonry's growth over the world and its appeal to men of high position.

While Prince of Wales. King Edward VII of England was Grand Master of English Masons. In 1909 H. R. H. Prince Frederick Leopold was "Wisest Master" of the German Masons, King Gustaf V was Grand Master of the order in Sweden.

Freemasonry reached the British American colonies early, but the first "regular" Lodge was established in Boston in 1733. George Washington was initiated into a Scottish lodge at Fredericksburg, Va., in 1752. More important to the meeting of celebrants last week was the fact that when Washington was sworn in in Manhattan as first President of the U. S. the Grand Master of the New York lodge administered the oath and the local Grand Secretary was marshal of the day. From then on, so many U. S. officials were Masons that in 1826 an Anti-Masonic Party was organized. It did not succeed; Freemasonry has prospered. But it is not even paralleled by the A. F. of L.'s masons' union. Its membership is mostly business and professional men, mostly "accepted" Masons. Its purposes have become purely fraternal and political. Among "accepteds'' who attended the celebration last week were onetime Presidential Candidate John William Davis, onetime Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby. Chief local "accepted" was Dr. Charles Henry Johnson. New York State Grand Master, who told the others: "The purpose of the organization is not merely to get more men into Masonry, but rather to get more Masonry into men."

Chief foreign "accepted" Mason present was Arthur Oliver Villiers Russell, Lord Ampthill, oldtime British oarsman and onetime (1904) pro tem. Viceroy of India. He brought the good wishes of the Duke of Connaught. Grand Master of English Masons, to the New York Grand Lodge. At a dinner following the meeting, he exclaimed: "You have a saying here: 'Hats off to the past and coats off to the future.' And to that I say: 'So ought it be!' ''

*Rev. James Anderson, professing to be an historian of Masonry in 1723, wrote: "Grand Master Moses often marshalled the Israelites into a regular and general lodge. . . . King Solomon was Grand Master of the lodge at Jerusalem," etc., etc.

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