Page:Isis very much unveiled - being the story of the great Mahatma hoax (IA b24884273).pdf/109

Rh willingly taking such an oath. Was Mrs. Besant quite right when she gave the public what she confesses was a “misleading account” of these secrets, and only in the wrong when, along with Colonel Olcott and the rest, she proposed to give what she now knew to be the correct one? Is the position that a Theosophist may “tell”—anything he likes, except the truth?

The absence of Colonel Olcott and Mrs. Besant does not alter the fact that he with others made, and she publicly adopted, certain charges against Mr. Judge, vice-president. And the silence of their colleagues in England does not disguise the fact that my account of the details has not been challenged as to one single event, letter, or facsimile. The published “Report of an Enquiry” cries aloud for some explanation: the explanation of “Isis Very Much Unveiled” holds the field untouched. It leaves the vice-president only able to exculpate himself, if at all, by further inculpating them. The “full rebuttal evidence held in reserve,” therefore, at which his professed representative in England hints, can be formidable only to the Theosophical Society, not to its critics. I am bound to say, however, that if the would-be impressive fragments of it which have been privately adumbrated to me are fair samples of the rest, it is not calculated to be formidable to anybody. When the “affidavits” hinted at have been published, or otherwise submitted to examination, I can promise them all the attention they deserve. To say that any affidavit, until cross-examined upon, is worth exactly as much as the paper it is written on would be an uncalled-for slight upon the paper-maker.

A word or two about the attempt to create a diversion by attacking the character of the one Theosophical official who has had the honesty to resign office rather than shut his eyes to a fraud on the public. The attack on Mr. Old cannot in any case discredit the story I have narrated. First, because the largest and most important part of that story is from the undenied written evidence of persons still holding office in the society, and especially