“I did my utmost to prevent a public Committee of Enquiry of an official character.”—Mrs. Besant at T.S. Convention, July 12, 1894.
How even a “psychologised baby” like Colonel Olcott came to succumb to a movement for ousting him from office, backed by such methods as we have examined, is to me a mystery. No doubt he had his own reasons for avoiding a contest in disclosures with his old colleague Mr. Judge, who knows so much about Theosophy ever since the days of its foundation. At any rate, succumb he did. On receiving an emissary from Avenue-road, early in 1892, he threw up the cards in the unequal game with the Mahatma, and formally resigned his presidency.
Then was seen a touching sight. Cæsar pushed away the crown. Mr. Judge was loth to succeed. Who could doubt it? Why, he got a “message” countermanding the resignation, and forwarded it to the Colonel (March, 1892), just too late to be acted on before the American Convention in April, which, with decent reluctance, acclaimed Mr. Judge for the vacant office.
But now came a hitch. Colonel Olcott took the anti-resignation message au grand sérieux. He forgot all his doubts about Mr. Judge’s Mahatma missives in his simple joy at the tenor of this last one. It was but a typed copy which Mr. Judge sent him. Never mind, it was a declaration of peace; and if ever there was a man of peace it is the Colonel, despite his American brevet. He could not disobey the Master; he did withdraw his resignation. Such was his answer to Mr. Judge.
Mr. Judge expressed his delight. But in absence of mind—possibly excess of joy—he quite forgot to mention either the Master’s message or the Colonel’s consent at Avenue-road when, in the following July, the time came to make his succession to the Colonel’s office definite.
The result was that Mr. Judge was then and there elected president for life. Some voices were for a term; but Mrs. Besant arose in her eloquence and “swept up the floor” (in the phrase of one Theosophic enthusiast), and the election was “for life.” Alas! Contracts entered into for that period are notoriously apt to give out at an earlier date.
Perhaps one thing which explains the Colonel’s small show of fight is the fact that he was to be consoled with an “Olcott Pension Fund.” Unhappily the treasurer defalcated some eight or nine thousand rupees, and then committed suicide. Ill-luck seemed to dog the vanquished president.
But now came the turn of the tide.
On the announcement of Judge’s election, Colonel Olcott indignantly wrote to Avenue-road to point out that there was no vacancy. And he printed in the Theosophist the Master’s message which had led him to withdraw his resignation.
He did more. The Theosophist, the official journal of the Indian section, has come to be Colonel Olcott’s private property, just as Lucifer is Mrs. Besant’s, and The Path Mr. William Q. Judge’s—an illustration of the odd mixture of private and official capacities in this society. And now the Colonel plucked up heart to publish in his paper the first note publicly heard of criticism—yes, actual criticism—of Mr. Judge’s Mahatma.