MR. PIDDINGTON, K. C."S OPINION.
The following are the chief points made by this gentleman, who is not a member of the T. S., and therefore represents an impartial legal and public view of the moral issue at stake:--
My resignation is based on the ground that the Society ought to withdraw its invitation to Mrs. Besant until the matters involved in her defence of Mr. C. W. Leadbeater have been settled by a trustworthy tribunal.
Grave allegations were recently made against Mr. Leadbeater by Mr. Martyn [see _ante_, p. 18,] for his letter to Mrs. Besant, and Mr. Leadbeater"s precept and practice in the training of boys have been quoted. Mr. Martyn is supported by other reputable Australians.
Before landing here, and since, Mrs. Besant has refused any inquiry into these matters, and taken up positions which, in a teacher of morals disent.i.tle her to be heard by an undergraduate society which exists for the pursuit of truth.
These positions are:--
1. That there is a cla.s.s of beings so high in the religious order that to accuse them is presumption on the part of the common people. Indeed accusations are "persecution," which proves the sanct.i.ty of these higher beings, and is (in Mrs.
Besant"s words) the "seal of their apostolate."
2. Mrs. Besant refers Mr. Leadbeater"s challengers to the courts, though to propagate in private the abominable tenet held by him does not const.i.tute an offence against any law, but only against common decency as understood by ordinary men.
3. She writes that she does not believe, and will not discuss Mr. Martyn"s allegations, though she writes from India of what Mr. Martyn says happened in his own home in Sydney.
If these are good reasons for refusing to hold an inquiry, then immorality can be safely taught and practised in high places so long as the teacher belongs to Mrs. Besant"s way of thinking.
From the public point of view such a claim cuts the ground from all morals.
In her letter to the _Daily Telegraph_ [of Sydney] for May 18, Mrs. Besant asks the public to believe that Mr. Leadbeater has to meet charges relating to 1906 [see _ante_, p. 27], and disposed of [?] by some private investigation in 1908. The fact is ignored that Mr. Martyn"s accusations relate to conduct since 1914, Worse than this, the fact is suppressed that Mrs.
Besant in 1913 was herself ordered by the Madras High Court to return to their father two boys whom she insisted in placing in Mr. Leadbeater"s care, in spite of the father"s protest. [See _ante_, p. 40] ... Mr. Justice Bakewell said that, from Leadbeater"s evidence, he was "certainly an immoral person, and highly unfit to be in charge of the boys." He also found that Mrs. Besant had violated her stipulation made with the father before parting with the boys, that they should have nothing to do with Mr. Leadbeater. (London _Times_, March 8, 1913.)
In the following year Mr. Leadbeater came to Australia and now "trains" Australian boys.
Mrs. Besant lent herself and her oratory to the acquittal, without evidence, of Mr. Leadbeater at a public meeting ... In my view it is as bad to rescue a man from public justice (which is a wider term than criminal law) by the exercise of a dominating personal veto, as it is to do it by money or social or any other "influence"--"influence" which is the bane of any system of justice.... She may effect a master-stroke of salvage, but she offends every canon of fairplay, let alone of that ordinary morality by which all men, high or humble, must be content to be judged. These sombre facts stand out:--
1. Mrs. Besant"s chief colleague has stated as late as 1913 in open court that he still believed in teaching a detestable vice to boys, which he had previously taught them.
2. An English Judge for this reason declared him to be an immoral person.
3. Mr. Martyn accused Mr. Leadbeater of being still what the English judge said of him, and alleged fact upon fact in support of this.
4. Mrs. Besant has shielded Mr. Leadbeater from inquiry.
5. Mr. Leadbeater says nothing.
AN INDICTMENT OF MRS. BESANT BY A RESIGNING MEMBER OF HER E. S.
Further very recent testimony and criticism is furnished by a letter of resignation from Mrs. Besant"s Esoteric School by Mr. Hugh R. Gillespie, of Krotona, California, one of the strongholds of the "Liberal Catholic Church." The letter, dated May 29, is printed in the _O. E. Critic_ of August 16, and the Editor in a prefatory note says:--
The writer ... is well-known to Theosophists of three continents as a lecturer and as a fearless, persistent and uncompromising fighter for honesty and cleanness in the T. S.
For almost three years he was attached to Adyar as architect and sanitary engineer.... He was at Adyar during the trial of the "Cases" in the Madras courts and saw the whole sordid drama in action. During this period he had abundant opportunity for getting light, as well as sidelights, on the working of the Adyar machine and on the personal peculiarities of the G.o.ds and demiG.o.ds of the Theosophical Olympus. Later he was resident three years at Krotona, where similar opportunities were not lacking.
Mr. Gillespie writes that he resigns as a protest against the actions and utterances of Mrs. Besant as "Outer Head" of the E. S. and President of the T. S., and continues:--
These actions and utterances have, since her a.s.sumption of the above mentioned positions, been of such a character that, to use the words of H. P. B., the Theosophical Society is
" ... being made a spectacle to the world through the exaggerations of some fanatics, and the attempt of various charlatans to profit by a ready-made programme. These, by disfiguring and adapting Occultism to their own filthy and immoral ends bring disgrace on the whole movement."
As a result of Mrs. Besant"s methods we learn that the T. S.
and E. S. in almost every section is seething with dissension.
England, Australia and America are racked and torn; Germany is split; Finland is shattered, and the closing of the E. S. for some four years in Switzerland indicates the conditions there.
Mrs. Besant"s arrogance and vanity in office and her lack of dignity, as exemplified in her ridiculous "Whom will ye serve?"
tirade, and her letter of March, 1922, have drawn the attention of the great London weekly _Truth_, and in its pages the T. S.
is held up to the scorn and ridicule of the world. [I have dealt with these under the heading of "Mrs Besant"s Latest a.s.sertions and Claims Examined."--A. L. C.]
So far as the E. S. is concerned, my experience of its working under Mrs. Besant in Australia, Adyar, England, and America enable me to a.s.sert that it is nothing but a political machine used for the purpose of securing the ascendancy of Mrs. Besant in the various bodies to which E. S. members have gained access. [I would draw particular attention to this important statement. It is especially true of India, which is the princ.i.p.al scene of her political activities.--A. L. C.]
... Mrs. Besant"s parade of thrusting the L. C. C. out of the T. S. door while bringing it in by the E. S. window, added to her condonement of the vile practices of the L. C. C. bishops and priests, fall little short of a betrayal of the T S. and could only be adequately met by her resignation from all office....
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
_The Secret Doctrine._ London, 1888. _The Key to Theosophy and The Voice of the Silence._ London 1889. _The Theosophical Glossary._ London, 1892.
_Practical Occultism_ Reprint, London, 1921.--H. P. Blavatsky.
_Mrs. Besant and the Present Crisis in the Theosophical Society._ With a Prefatory Letter by M. Edouard Schure. London, 1913.--Eugene Levy.
_The Central Hindu College and Mrs. Besant. (The Rise of the Alcyone Cult.)_ Chicago, 1913.--Bhagavan Das.
_Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky and "The Secret Doctrine."_ London, 1893--Countess Constance Wachtmeister.