At Madras

Cables carried the news from Madras. The Theosophical Society had opened the celebration of its 50th anniversary. To greet the aged President Annie Besant was a sufficiently grand collection of 5,000 delegates of 37 nationalities. But there were no further details concerning the "reincarnation of Christ in the person of J. Krishnamurti."

Mr. Krishnamurti is an old story. He has titillated sewing circles periodically since 1908, when sweet Mrs. Besant carried him from India off to her English home. He was 12 years old, reminiscent to Mrs. Besant of a Boy who talked to doctors in the Temple. He had written a book, At the Feet of the Master, and Mrs. Besant, just turned 60, was young to theosophy. She is now 78.

As years passed and the boy grew at Mrs. Besant's and at Oxford, the "Grand Old Lady of India" was confirmed in her first inspiration that Mr. Krishnamurti would be the Second Messiah.

A few weeks ago he sailed unostentatiously from the U. S. to attend the Madras conference, leaving behind him in the Philosophers' Book Shop, Manhattan, one Captain R. L. Jones, full of faith. To a reporter of the New York Herald Tribune, the bookish Captain hinted that the reincarnation of Christ in Mr. Krishnamurti would occur quite soon, he being now 30 years of age--again reminiscent. And this information the Herald Tribune reporter expansively divulged to the public.

Theosophy itself is an inoffensive cult of universal sweetness, light, passivity. Mrs. Besant is a lady of undoubted kindness and some scholarship. She holds a doctor's degree (Litt. D.) from the University of Benares, India. According to Captain Jones, she now plans to appoint twelve "apostles," including herself and several other ladies, to tour the world with the haloed Krishnamurti. Whether she intends anything more than a superlative theosophic lecture tour, with or without a Messiah, depends upon the accuracy of Captain Jones's information.