The daily Alaskan., 1911-09-14
SECRET SOCIETIES
The Earliest Ones Had Strenuous
 Initiation Rites.
SEVERE TESTS OF COURAGE.

to Threofold Trial by Fire, by Wa
 Ger and by Air-Ths Order of Assas-
 slns and Their Sham Paradise.
 Among primitive communities in which might is right and the tyranny of superstition is absolute minorltes have always been treated with scant consideration. and overt dissent from the opinions of the majority had a tendency to initiate against the sur vival of the dissenter. Liberty of thought and action. qualified only by the rights of others, is a comparative ly late growth. But thought dies hard and when denied open expression lives in secret imparted to a few chosen as- sociates until the times are ripe for 1t to be dlYulged. Thus a few thinkers and their disciples would band them selves together into a secret society, and the instinct of self preservation would cause them to guard against their secret being revealed to the un- initiated.
 The earliest secret societies were religious rather than political. In the mysteries of Persia, India and Egypt an inner ring of priests formed an ex- elusive association whose members gradually became the repositories of the bulk of the learning of the com munity. Severe tests of courage and nerve were imposed upon all aspirants for admission to the order. Among the Egyptians the neophyte was taken down a deep shaft ID one of the pyra- mids and subjected to a threefold trial by fire, by water and by air.
 He had to walk across a grating of redhot Iron bars, with narrow inter- stices whereon he might tread in safe ty. to swim a wide and dark channel communicating with the Nile and to hang suspended by two iron rings over au abyss in the blast Of two swiftly revolving wheels. Even then he had to undergo prolonged fasting and silence and to take an oath of secrecy ere his initiation was complete A secret brotherhood of nobles, partly religious and partly political, which aimed at the concentration of knowledge and power in the hands of it's members, was established by Pythagoras at Crotona, in the south of Italy. For a time it succeeded in gaining the supreme d. recdou of affairs. but after the Syba- rites had succumbed to the Spartan discipline of the order 1t was suppress ed by rising of the discontented.
 During the middle ages the unset tied and lawless condition of many countries engendered by the weakness or the absence of their nominal rulers was especially favorable to the growth of secret societies. Toward the close of the eleventh century Hasan-ben- Sabah, a Mohammedan fanatic who had been a fellow student with Omar Khayyam at Naishapur, seized the cas- tie of Alamut and founded the sect of the assassins. It Is still a moot point whether the word which their evil deeds have given a permanent place in the languages of Europe as a synonym for murderers be derived from the founders name or from the hemp Opi- ate hashish wherewith they were wont to fuddle their brains to a pitch of sudden frenzy. The Venetian trav- eler Marco Polo tells of an ingenious plan adopted by their chieftain to h. sure the unquesdoniug devotion of bis dupes. This was no less than the creation of a sham paradise with lux urious gardens, rivers of honey and wine and houris, all complete. Thither the man selected for any dangerous exploit was transported in a state of lntoxication and on bis return was told that he had been given a toretaste of his life after death
 The terror of their name soon spread through Europe No potentate was safe from the vengeance of a sect which regarded death In the execution of their lords decrees as the gate of paradise. King Philip Augustus of France, contemporary and foe of Rich ard Occur de Lion, having incurred their enmity, was so afraid of them that he dared not stir abroad without his guards around him. and perhap1 bis fear appeased the ruthless sheIk, for their plans rarely miscarried The order was ultimately crushed in 1856 by an irrupdOn of Mongols under Hu- laku Khan.
 In Germany the violence and aD- archy that prevailed after the outlaw ry of Henry the Lion. when every pet ty baron tyrannized without let or hindrance over all whom his power could reach. led to the institution of very different secret society, whose functions were purely judicial The "vehmgericht" was an attempt to check the license of the feudal lords and to secure the due chastsement of crime. It was the proud boast of this court that 1t judged in secret and pun ished in secret Every member was sworn to reveal all crimes that came to his notice. even if committed by those nearest and dearest to him; hence it became a maxim of the ju- rists of the time, Non frater a fratre, non hospes ab hosplte, tutus" The sentence of the court involved outlaw ". degradatoD and deuth; the con