THE BUILDER 1918
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN BROTHERHOOD A LEAGUE OF MASONS

BY BRO. SIR ALFRED ROBBINS

PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF GENERAL PURPOSES, UNITED GRAND LODGE OF
ENGLAND

The spell of this wonderful article is still upon me--I doubt
whether it will ever disappear. With consummate grace, with all the
niceties of expression to which our common tongue lends itself,
this eminent English brother speaks words which ought to ring in
the ears of every American Mason. Not content merely to say he
yearns for the intimate fellowship of his American brethren, he
extends his own hand across the sea. Can we do less than grasp it?
With no profession that he understands America, and no
protestations that he sympathizes with our historic separation from
the British Empire, disclaiming in fact any Masonic responsibility
for that separation, he boldly and frankly says that in
Revolutionary days England, under the leadership of a king with
German blood in his veins took a position which Masonry did not
then countenance, any more than it does so now; that English
Masonry of today, even as the English nation of this day, loses its
regrets for that unhappy separation in its joy over the reunion of
the present in our common cause; rejoices, indeed, in this
thrilling consummation of the liberties then won; and pledges
himself to the battles of the future in behalf of Masonic ideals,
inviting us to join him at the Masonic Altar, renew our vows to
Masonry, and then, hand in hand, keeping step one with another, go
forward to accomplish the destiny of our ONE Fraternity. Soberly,
prayerfully consider the fraternal alliance which his words
contemplate. Dream if you will--but dream not too long-- over the
wonderful possibilities of this joint effort in behalf of a
war-torn and suffering Humanity. Starting from this true LEVEL,
what cannot Masonry accomplish? Let us not dream, let us act as
Representatives? Ambassadors of Good Will? Yes, let us have them,
and let us USE them! Let our acts, not less than our words, prove
to Sir Alfred Robbins and the Grand Lodge of England that we are as
free and as fervent in spirit as they are we are as fervent in
spirit as they are!

"And may the day soon dawn, when all the earth shall be ONE HOLY
LAND, and all mankind ONE GREAT LODGE OF BRETHREN, and when all
religions of hate and fear shall have vanished away, and wars and
persecutions be known no more, forever."

ON the evening of September 2nd, 1914, the United Grand Lodge of
England held its first Quarterly Communication after the outbreak
of war. It was a moment fraught with fate, not only for the British
Empire, not alone for her Allies, but, as every Mason present felt
in his heart, for liberty, for humanity, for civilisation itself.
The armies of France, of Britain, and of Belgium alike had been
forced back in the sudden overwhelming onrush of the invading
hosts; the enemy were sweeping on to the gates of Paris; the
crowning mercy of the Maine was yet to come and was hardly dared
hope for; and darkness had descended on many a soul. It was Sedan
Day, the date fixed in the long-devised time-table of the enemy
High Command for triumphal entry into the French capital; and the
grim anniversary loomed an omen of evil out of the news that
sobered all. In the Grand Temple of Freemasons' Hall in that
awe-inspiring hour, not a word of gloom, not a hint of despondency,
was to be heard. The Right Worshipful, the truly Right Worshipful
Deputy Grand Master of the English Craft--a legislator of prolonged
experience, an administrator of proved skill, and a member of His
Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council--struck on the instant a
clear note. He at once proposed, in eloquent and moving terms, a
resolution deeply appreciating the loyal and devoted service to
their country rendered by brothers of all ranks, and offering an
earnest prayer for their continued wellbeing. It was my privilege,
as President of the Board of General Purposes of Grand Lodge to
second this; and my closing words I echo today: "Those of us who
are compelled to stay at home are prepared to make what sacrifices
they can in the present emergency. There is probably not one of us
who has not someone close to him concerned in this struggle. They
go forth knowing that they possess all our confidence and our hope.
We know our confidence will be justified. We earnestly pray our
hope will be fulfilled. Grand Lodge sends forth this message to
those fighting for their country, feeling confident it will cheer
them in the hour of battle to know that with them are their
brethren's hearts."

At this moment, and speaking, as I hope to do, to American
Freemasons, especial interest attaches to the words of our Deputy
Grand Master in submitting the resolution: "We have all come
together in the hour of danger. We are gratified to have with us a
Past Grand Master of South Carolina. Although I cannot, perhaps,
allude to him as being entirely committed to this motion, because
he belongs to the Grand Lodge of another Jurisdiction and to a
neutral country, yet we feel that he is of a people who are bone of
our bone and flesh of our flesh. America is a neutral country but
I believe that our American brethren must appreciate, as we do, the
manner in which our brethren and countrymen have risen and flocked
to the service of King and Country in the hour of need." This
proved a fitting prelude to the most impressive demonstration of
Anglo-American Masonic fraternity ever known up to that time in the
whole of the two-century annals of our Grand Lodge.

At the desire of the Grand Master--H. R. H. The Duke of Connaught,
at that moment serving the Empire as Governor-General of the
Dominion of Canada-- there was read by our revered but now departed
Grand Secretary, Sir Edward Letchworth, this communication from the
Grand Lodge of Massachusetts:

"As your eldest child in the Western hemisphere, the Grand Lodge of
Massachusetts, while officially avoiding partisanship in the civil
conflict, nevertheless cannot let this hour pass without advising
your Grand Lodge of its deep concern for those of your brethren and
their dependants who are suffering in body or estate, and we wish
to offer all the Masonic succour within our power consistent with
citizenship in a neutral nation. I beg that you, not in any
military or civic capacity, but solely as Grand Master, will cause
me to be informed of any such aid or comfort to afflicted brethren
or their families within our power to extend."

Promptly Grand Lodge adopted with enthusiasm a second resolution,
thus associating itself with the Grand Master in thanks to Bro.
Melvin Johnson, Grand Master of the Masons of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, and in deep appreciation of his message as voicing
a sincerity of Masonic feeling especially welcome to the Grand
Lodge of England. "We are not insensible," exclaimed the Deputy
Grand Master in making the motion, "to the sympathy and love of our
brother Masons in foreign jurisdictions in this time of trouble and
stress." "Grand Lodge," added the Provincial Grand Master of
Norfolk (the late Bro. Hamon le Strange) in seconding, "must be
deeply gratified by this mark of interest and sympathy shown by our
eldest child across the Atlantic. We deeply appreciate the truly
Masonic spirit shown by the Masons of Massachusetts, and their
willingness to succour the old country, from which they came, in
its hour of need." A striking and even dramatic episode immediately
followed the resolution's unanimous acceptance. The very first
visitor of distinction from America ever known to have attended a
Quarterly Communication of the Grand Lodge of England was, as his
name appears on our records, "John Hammerton, Esq., P.G.M. of S.
Carolina." As in April, 1738, so in September, 1914, that State ha~
a distinguished representative in Grand Lodge; and on this latter
occasion it was Bro. J. Adger Smyth, Past; Grand Master of South
Carolina, who thus addressed the assembled brethren:

"I am the representative of the United Grand Lodge of England for
the State of South Carolina, and have served you in that capacity
for thirty years. My father was an Englishman, my grandfather was
an Englishman, and my grandmother was a Scotch woman. If my
sympathies do not flow out to you, my brethren, in this hour of
distress and national anxiety, I am no living man. I wish you to
know that I represent the feelings and sentiment of the Grand Lodge
of South Carolina when I say to you, and the brethren in this
country, that we heartily endorse and say word for word what has
been so well said by our brethren of the Grand Lodge of
Massachusetts."

The thrill experienced in that earliest moment of the tremendous
struggle still proceeding can never be forgotten. Every brother in
Grand Lodge that night --from the venerable and venerated Deputy
Grand Master of the English Jurisdiction to the youngest Junior
Warden of a Private Lodge--had passed on his way into Grand Lodge
a fine portrait of America's first President, Masonically clothed,
which stands prominently forth, as a most honoured possession on
the great staircase of Freemasons' Hall. Entering Grand Lodge under
the serenely smiling shade of Washington, hearing, in Grand Lodge,
united voices of cheer and hope from North and South, typified by
Massachusetts and South Carolina, the English Masons felt, in Grand
Lodge, an uplifting of the spirit of true Brotherhood which since
has deepened and at no time has failed. As from Grand Temple they
went forth to their homes, and midnight came, and Sedan Day,
threatening so foul, passed with gleam of hope, there were those of
us who from our hearts echoed Lincoln's immortal words. Fol we
likewise that day had highly resolved that our dead should not have
died in vain; that our nation, under God, should have a new birth
of freedom; and that Government of the people, by the people and
for the people should not perish from the earth.

One further war-time association between American and English
Masons--and this even more intimate, for they now had become
Allies--is to be recalled. At the Bi-centenary commemoration in
June, 1917, of the first Assembly of the Grand Lodge of England,
eight thousand brethren learned with deep satisfaction that
messages of congratulation had come from the Grand Lodges of
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, of Rhode Island and New Jersey, as
well as of South Dakota, which I have the honourable privilege to
represent at Freemasons' Hall. In his opening address to that vast
meeting of Masons, the Grand Master accorded hearty greeting to all
the distinguished brethren from other Jurisdictions, emphasising,
amid loudly approving cheers, his welcome to those from the United
States. "They well know," said His Royal Highness, "that we hold
fast to our immemorial and immovable principles, and that, even in
this time of very great difficulty to very many among us, we,
through the agency of our Masonic Institutions, are ever broadening
the avenues of benevolence towards those who fall by the way. And,
with the fear of the Great Architect of the Universe ever before
our eyes, we today dedicate ourselves anew to the supreme task of
so maintaining Masonry in its fullest splendour, that the result of
our counsels and our acts shall be the dispensing of justice to all
men, the maintaining of the honour and safety of the Realm, and the
uniting and knitting-together of the hearts of all our brethren in
Love, Charity and Masonic Truth." Later, the Duke of Connaught
added these words of special welcome: "To our American brethren,
we, say how sincerely we recognise that love of truth and loyalty
to freedom which have led their Nation to join with our own and
with our Allies in the present struggle. From its beginning we have
felt that the cause which we defend is that of Masonic Brotherhood
in its noblest aspects, and that the victory of our cause will
ensure the spread throughout all lands of the Three Grand
Principles on which our Order is founded, and the triumph of which
was never more necessary, and, we trust, never more assured, than
it is at this hour." And the loud acclaim which arose from every
part of the great assemblage testified the instant effect of the
appeal.

I have dealt thus in detail with these circumstances because they
are the most recent illustration--and afforded in the present
war-time--of the bond of unity which throughout our Masonic history
has existed between British and American Freemasonry. Boundaries
whether of nature or nationality have never, as such, served to
sever from us our brethren, wherever dispersed over the face of
earth or water. "Masonry"-- it is laid down in the very first of
the Antient Charges of a Freemason, prefaced to the Book of
Constitutions, a copy of which is placed in the hands of every
English Initiate--"is the centre of union between good men and
true, and the happy means of conciliating friendship amongst those
who must otherwise have remained at a perpetual distance." "It has
ever flourished in times of peace," says the second, "and . . .
Craftsmen are bound by peculiar ties to promote peace, cultivate
harmony, and live in concord and brotherly love." No one, and
especially today, will dispute these verities from of old; and in
no direction have they been more persistently testified than in the
relations of Anglo-American Freemasonry.

It is no exaggeration to say that, if the rulers of the English
States had displayed the same breadth of wisdom and understanding
towards her children and kinsmen in America as from the very outset
was shown by the rulers of the English Craft, there would have been
no War of Independence. The fullest liberty of self-government
would, from the beginning, have existed, and would have been
sweetened by the strongest yet simplest bonds of fraternal
relationship, regard, and trust. Let us take of this the surest
test--that not of theory or of tradition but of recorded fact. In
1730, and on the Fifth of June American Masonry's Independence Day-
-the Duke of Norfolk, as Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of
England, signed in London a "Deputation to Daniel Cox, Esq., to be
Provincial Grand Master of the Provinces of New York, New Jersey
and Pensilvania in America." In this instrument, the one who was
proud to describe himself therein as "Earl Marshal and Hereditary
Marshal of England, after the Princes of the Royal Blood, first
Duke, Earl, and Baron of England, Chief of the Illustrious Family
of the Howards," sent greeting "To all and every our Right
Worshipful, Worshipful and loving Brethren now residing, or who may
hereinafter reside, in the Provinces of New York, New Jersey, and
Pensilvania." He declared that, in response to the desire and
application of the Freemasons in those parts, Daniel Cox of New
Jersey should be ordained, constituted and appointed' Provincial
Grand Master of the three Provinces "with full Power and Authority
to nominate and appoint his Deputy Grand Master and Grand Wardens
for the space of two years from the Feast of St. John the Baptist
now next ensuing, after which time it is our Will and Pleasure and
We do hereby ordain that the Brethren who so now reside or may
hereafter reside in all or any of the said Provinces, shall and
they are hereby Impowered every other year on the Feast of St. John
the Baptist to elect a Provincial Grand Master, who shall have the
power of nominating and appointing his Deputy Grand Master and
Grand Wardens."

American Freemasons, therefore, possessed the full choice of their
immediate rulers in the Craft from the earliest moment of organised
existence. They had virtually selected their first chief; they were
directly empowered to elect every successor; and, in return, all
that was required was that they should observe the Book of
Constitutions, and forward to Masonry's central home an annual
account of their lodges and membership "together with such other
matters and things as they shall think fit to be-communicated for
the Prosperity of the Craft." There was no question of "Taxation
without Representation." The American lodges from the beginning
controlled their own finance, without either remittance or
reference to England. All that was suggested in this direction was
that their ruler at each annual gathering "at that time more
particularly and at all Quarterly Communications do recommend a
General Charity to be established for the Reliefe of poor Brethren
of the said Provinces," this being the usual course adopted at
home. Freedom to choose their own chiefs; freedom to work in order
and regularity under those chiefs; freedom from overseas
interference with their finance--these were the corner stones of
the Charter of Independence sent from England to American Masonry
on June 5, 1730. They were not fully asked from England by American
citizenship until July 4, 1776.

From the outset, the relations thus happily and spontaneously
established worked with smoothness. American Provincial Grand
Masters, on the rare occasion of a stay in England, visited Grand
Lodge and were placed in the official records with the rulers of
the Craft. Individual lodges occasionally communicated with the
central authority; but so little was there any idea of interference
that the records of Grand Lodge during the War of Independence may
be searched in vain for trace of intervention in the struggle or of
intent to impose English ideas on American Masons. Grand Lodge at
the very beginning had accorded liberty of thought and action, and
it never departed from that original standpoint. Brethren remained
brethren despite constitutional dispute and civil discord; and even
today in some of our ancient lodges, closely allied by circumstance
with Atlantic voyage, each entrant to the Craft has the
universality of Masonry forcibly impressed upon him by allusions
plainly dating from Continental times. "Wherever it shall please
the will of Providence to cast your lot," he is told, "whether you
traverse the banks of the Mississippi, whether you dwell amid the
immeasurable wilds of the scattered Indian tribes across the mighty
Atlantic, aye, even on the battle-field itself, you will everywhere
find a brother who will greet you--in every nation a brother, in
every clime a home."

A profound cause exists for this abiding alliance in spirit between
American and British Freemasons. They alike hold in highest regard
honourable obligation, moral responsibility, and human freedom. The
"all men are created equal" of the Declaration of Independence is
but to emphasise the demonstration by the Level that we have all
sprung from the same stock, are partakers of the same nature, and
sharers in the same hope. The First Amendment to the Constitution
of the United States, directing that Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free
exercise, is in absolute accord with the First Article of the
Antient Charges, which enjoins: "Let a man's religion be what it
may, he is not excluded from the Order, provided he believes in the
Glorious Architect of Heaven and Earth, and practice the sacred
duties of morality." And nothing more completely could consort with
the theory and practice of American citizenship than the
declaration of our Fourth Article: "All preferment among Masons is
grounded upon real worth and personal merit only; that so the lords
may be well served, the brethren not put to shame, or the Craft
despised."

These are of the fundamentals of Freemasonry as known and practised
by American and British brethren alike; and they never better
deserved remembrance than in this hour of allied nationhood amid
external strife. It is a time for the ideal to be a beacon-light to
the real, not to discover divergence but to cement union. "In
things essential, unity; in things non-essential, diversity; in all
things, charity." For two centuries, English and American
Freemasons, standing side by side, have worked hand in hand.
Rendering services not of the lip but of the life to the immortal
truths-- embodied in the principles of the Craft--not wasting
energy in mystical speculation, but bending strength to practical
endeavour--the union of hearts existing throughout our common
Masonic history should now lead to a union of hands. It is given to
us of today to dissipate the belief of the bygone that "Masonry has
been always injured by war, bloodshed and confusion." The nominal
official relationships long established between the majority of the
Grand Lodges of the United States and the United Grand Lodge of
England should be extended to all, and in every case made more
real. Let the distinguished brethren thus accredited on both sides
of the Atlantic act as ambassadors, keeping each other in constant
comradeship. Let there be organised a system enabling
representative English Masons visiting the United States and
representative American Masons coming to this country--for, when
the present stress ends, there will be even increased
inter-visitation compared with pre-war times--to attend lodge
meetings at their desire during their stay. Let means be devised
for making us better acquainted with each other's ideas, each
other's ways, for the first condition of true friendship is full
knowledge. Even now there exists the nucleus of such a system in
the two London lodges under the English Constitution in special
kinship with the United States, the one composed of Americans by
birth or association, the other of Americans alone. Development of
the idea would demand time, entail trouble, necessitate thought.
But the time, trouble, and thought alike would be well expended to
bring the Craft in both countries into closer communion and surer
touch.

If we adopted this as our ideal, means would be found to make it
real. While Statesmen strive to establish a League of Nations, let
us set up, for ourselves and the brethren with whom we always in
principle and practice have been allied, a League of Masons.
Reverent recognition of The Eternal, resolute renouncement of the
political--these are the foundation and corner stone of our Masonic
system. On so sure a base, a superstructure can be raised
embracing, as in a house of many mansions, the vast Masonic family,
independent as units, united as a whole. Britain and America,
Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the Cape, India and the Isles
beyond seas can dwell together under that roof. It may be but a
vision, and yet even as a vision it inspires. That first Grand
Original who stood upon Mount Pisgah could only see, could never
enter, the Promised Land. Yet even the sight gladdened his failing
eyes after his long toilings to lead his people into the light.

In the pursuit of so high an endeavour, difficulties exist only to
be dispersed; and never was it more true that where there is a
will, there is a way. Bound to each other by ties of common origin,
identical ideals, and never broken friendship, American and British
Freemasonry could render inestimable service, not only to the
brotherhood, but to mankind, by more intimacy of association and
intensity of aim. What we have to do is at once to put ourselves to
work and discover whether, by making the best use of Masonry,
lasting good may not be gained from the present world-welter of
war. It is a task worthy of the devotion of us all, and Masons on
both sides of the Atlantic should worthily rise to so supreme an
occasion. Then, even war will have its compensations. Out of the
eater shall come forth meat, and out of the strong shall come forth
sweetness. The far-flung battle-line shall give place to the
far-flung brother-line; and, great though will be our labour, our
reward shall be sure.
