FAREWELL REMARKS OF MR. JUDGE
ON THE VICE-PRESIDENCY
[ Copy
of a letter from Mr. Judge to Col. Olcott]
Dear Colonel,
Last June and July I laid before you the point
that I was never elected Vice-President of the "Theosophical
Society," consequently that office was then known to you to be vacant. The
decision then arrived at by you, Mr. Bertram Keightley, and Mr. George R.S.
Mead that I was Vice-President was invalid, of no effect, and quite contrary to
the fact. The original notification to the public that my name was attached to
the office was merely a notice of your selection, without the authority of the
Society you are the President-Founder of, and without any election by a
competent, regular and representative convention of that Society. I also
informed you in July that no notice was ever given to me of the said invalid
selection.
A long and bitter fight has been waged by Mrs.
Annie Besant and others, one of the objects of which is to compel me to resign
the said office which I do not hold. I have refused to accede to their
requests, and would refuse even did I hold that I was legally the
Vice-President.
But as I have worked a long time with you in the
cause of Theosophy, and am with you one of those who helped H.P.B. to start the
American movement in 1875, as I would aid you in all proper ways, and since I
hear that you are to be in London this summer to "settle the Judge
case," as you have proclaimed, I now beg to again point out to you that I
do not hold and never have held the office of Vice-President of any
Theosophical Society of which I am a member, and that you can consider this as
my declaration that I cannot and will not oppose you filling the said so-called
office in any way you may see fit, either arbitrarily or other wise.
While on this point I would say to you, that my
signing my name hitherto as "Vice-President" was in ignorance of the
important facts since ascertained, showing conclusively the de facto character of the act. Should you ask why then I raised the objection so long
ago as July, I reply that the Master whom you think I do not hear from directed
me to do so, and at that time I found only the fact of non-election in support
of it.
Fraternally,
(Signed) William Q. Judge
May 8th,1895
The Vahan June 1, 1895
The Irish Theosophist
June 15, 1895 |