"I want to tell you something that will stimulate your confidence, give you new courage and energy and bring about a renewed activity all along the line.

"In the first place The Menace is now esconced in its own building, having about 16,000 feet of floor space; a third linotype machine, the very latest model, is on the road; and as these lines are being written the Goss printing press manufacturers are installing the second perfecting press which, with one already here, gives us a capacity of approximately 40,000 papers per hour.

"That isn't all. The publishers, Phelps & McClure, have employed an experienced staff correspondent, a man who is a good writer, a sleuth and a thorough gentleman. He is on the job this very instant, in fact has already covered one assignment, the story of which will appear in the next issue of The Menace.

"The Romanists have accused us of rehashing the stories of the Inquisition and getting our data from history gone and forgotten, but with the assistance of this man in the field we are gong to show that the

Inquisition exits today as it has never existed, even though it be in a different form. We are going to turn the searchlight of publicity on the convents and the nunneries and invade the very citadels of Romanism. * * * * "

"The Menace wishes to state that it has made an addition to its staff in the person of Rev. H. George Buss, of Kansas City, MO., mention of whom was made in these columns last week without giving the name.

"Mr. Buss is now in the field in the capacity of staff correspondent, and, while his identity will be secret when necessity and occasion require it, when he reveals to the men on the Firing Line and at the battle front The Menace will appreciate deeply any courtesies and assistance rendered him in the discharge of his duties.

"Those who are familiar with the tactics of the enemy we are fighting will realize the gravity of the situation which Mr. Buss has accepted, but we assured ourselves in every way possible that he was made of the right material before we placed the responsibility of this undertaking in his hands.

"Mr. Buss is of English parentage and was born on the Canadian border. He was educated in the high schools of Kansas, finished a course in a business college at Harper, Kan., was a cadet at St. John's Military Academy, at Salina, Kan., and finished in the National Institute at Washington, D. C. After spending five years on the stage, he entered the Baptist Ministry in 1904, and was ordained in 1905.

"Mr. Buss entered the Evangelistic field early in

his Ministerial experience and was a brilliant success. He has seen slum service in many of the larger cities, together with newspaper work, and he holds an exhaustive store of favorable press comments, recommendations from men high up in the religious and literary world, as well as testimonies of the very best from people and churches where he was worked and is best known. He saw newspaper service in Cripple Creek and other points in Colorado during the notorious labor war in that state, and on more than one occasion has he stood his ground and finished his assignments where bullets rained like hail in a Kansas blizzard. "This, in brief, is the record of the man to whom we have assigned the task of going in where men have heretofore feared to tread. And it is with this kind of men The Menace is surrounding itself as necessity and occasion demand. The high, grey walls of the convents, nunneries and monasteries must be scaled, the dens of deviltry and darkness in which are concocted the devious and diabolical intrigues against American liberty and civilization must be entered, and the world enlightened. To do this is the task we have undertaken, and the battle will not cease until the enemy's country has been invaded and the battle flag of political and religious liberty planted upon the walls of the Vatican itself."

There is at the corner of Barret and North Fourth streets, in Kansas City, Kansas, a Croatian Catholic church. The building is grim, silent, gaunt, built of brick. The entrance steps are of stone. These steps

are blood-stained, stained with dark, ugly spots and splashes that no scrubbing and no white-washing can ever erase. For on the night of May 27th last, an American citizen shed his blood there---there in the black dark, there under the very shadow of the cross upreared upon the pinnacle of the frowning , embrasured tower, there it was that muffled cries of agony mingled with the dull, murderous thuds of the cruel iron bar that bit deep into the skull of John Severovic. And the eyes of the night saw that the bludgeon was held in the brawny first of a POLICEMAN in uniform and saw a huge, black-visaged Croatian priest chuckling in ghoulish glee and waiting with upraised ears the death-cry.

But the bruised form that was picked up from off those Catholic steps was not that of a corpse. The spark of life still lingered. Living men tell tales---sometimes. This one did. This child of the church, crushed that night beneath her iron heel, this slave of the Beast had arisen and dared to throw off the yoke. And thereby hangs a tale as interesting and withal as corrupt, under modern guise, as was the Inquisition of old; a story bristling with cold, bald, dirty, ugly facts that betray a political rottenness and a municipal prostitution of law, liberty and justice so dangerous and so revolting that your correspondent was simply appalled.

The Catholic church of St. John the Baptist is located in the midst of the Croatian colony in the first ward of Kansas City, Kansas, and this parish, comprising some two hundred and fifty families is presided over by a priest, M. D. Krmpotic, a Croatian by birth, who came to Kansas City some ten years ago from Chicago, where rumor has it, his record was dark and unsavory. Under his iron rule for the past few years these inoffensive people have been a political

asset to the notoriously rotten administration of the Kansas City, Kansas, municipal affairs.

But seven months ago there came another Croatian from Chicago, a young man, rather slight of build, gentle and courteous in speech and manner, but, withal---dangerous omen to priestcraft---in John Severovic's dark eyes there burned the clear light of thought, his face was the face of the student. And yet John was a laborer, he went to work for the Kansas City Wholesale Grocery Company.

Now, it is the Croatians who man the packing houses principally, and as a class they are quiet, peaceable, honest, but because of centuries of Catholic heredity and environment, they are like dumb-driven cattle under the lash of the priesthood.

Soon the priest scented his natural enemy. Severovic, let us remember, was a Catholic, a member of this Croatian Catholic church of St. John the Baptist and a member of the Kansas City, Kansas, lodge of Knights of Columbus. But evening by evening he was quietly visiting the homes of his "brother-in-blood" and teaching them a strange doctrine of personal and political liberty. The Beast growled ominously.

John Severovic even made two or three public speeches openly advocating socialistic freedom from all bondage.

On the evening of May 27th last John Severovic attended a "Good Government" meeting held in the basement of the church by the priest, Krmpotic. Several times the priest vehemently denounced all political movements, especially the socialistic, that taught liberty from the Catholic church. Finally John Severovic took issue with this priest, Krmpotic, quietly. Instantly the priest ran to him, shaking his fists in John's amazed face and shouting, "You say I

lie, you say I lie---take it back---take it back!"

This was the signal. The Beast struck---but in the dark, as ever. John Miller and Joe Cigic, two Croatian policemen in uniform, seized John Severovic and rushed him out upon the church steps. The report given the Kansas City papers was that here he fell and received a gash across the head from striking the steps. But he was taken to the hospital unconscious and there were four ugly holes in his scalp at the base of the brain. And every blow was struck from behind and while in the custody of these two policemen in uniform. The next morning a Croatian laborer passing by this church with the cross on the steeple, picked up a heavy iron bolt some twelve inches long with a square head, such as is used in structural steel work in the city. This bolt had been thrown hear the church steps. As your correspondent looked carefully at this awful iron bludgeon he shuddered for---it was bloodstained and bits of human scalp and hair hung to it still! This was picked up by Rudolph Sturbuns and is being held as evidence in the forthcoming damage suit.

Severovic spent a week in the hospital and then he was fined $100 in the police court. (!) Then Severovic brought suit in the Wyandotte county (Kansas) district court for $25,000 damages against the priest, Krmpotic, and the two policemen who ejected him from the church and whose hands were on him when he was slugged in the dark, John Miller and Joe Cigic. This suit is still pending. * * * * *

And so it comes to pass that one humble, gentle, educated Croatian is no longer a member of the Croation Society of St. Joseph or of the Croatian Catholic church of St. John the Baptist in "the Bottoms"---but today is free, an unchained man. But the rottenness of the back-alley, gum-shoe administration

of the municipal affairs of Kansas City, Kansas, will stink from now until purified under the open scrutiny of the public eye, until the scorching blaze of God's wrath shall once for all damn and destroy that domination that would plunge the liberty of the American nation aeons deep in one awful backward slide down the spiral of retrogression. Hellward.

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