Baptists at Buffalo

"Amen, Amen!" cried the delegates and they clapped their hands.

"What Miss Rebman needs is a big brother--from now on I'm going to be her big Christian brother," said Cleveland's Delegate E. A. Roberts.

"I refuse to be spit upon" said a Dean.

"These rumors are hellish" said the delegate from Austin, Minn. The delegates thereupon thundered more Amens and clapped louder than ever. . . .

There was little dignity or quietude at the convention in Buffalo last week of the Baptist Bible Union of North America.

The Baptists were angry. They shook their fists and shouted. Sometimes they nearly struck each other. Presiding over them was Dr. Thomas T. Shields, President of the Board of Trustees of Des Moines University from which, last fortnight, he had expelled the entire faculty.

Dr. Shields's chins quivered with emotion when he addressed the delegates. The majority cheered him, inferentially hissing his enemy, Dr. Harry Wayman, expelled President of Des Moines University, whose face is infinitely sad and who last week said: "If it were possible to banish Dr. Shields to some island under the sea. a great step would be taken in the interest of humanity but great injustice would be done to the fish of the sea." The Shields-Wayman controversy which everybody discussed at the Buffalo convention had reached its high point the week prior in a student egg-and-rock riot at Des Moines University (TIME, May 20). Dr. Shields, as President of the Trustees, demanded from University President Wayman the expulsion of six members of the faculty. To Fundamentalist Shields these members looked like Modernists. But President Wayman would make no expulsions. Followed the Shields expulsion of the whole faculty, the riot, and then a court order restraining the Shields action and making possible last week resumption of recitations, lectures at the University. It was with these things that the irate Buffalo convention dealt.

President Wayman did not attend the convention. But Dean Earl C. Galloway of the College of Pharmacy was there as his defender. He heard Dr. Shields charge that Dr. Wayman mismanaged the University, that he claimed academic degrees which were not rightly his. But when he tried to answer the charges, Dr. Shields would not yield the floor. Finally the Dean was allowed to speak, and then he found that most of the delegates would not listen to him. He therefore left the convention and started another at the Hotel Tourraine.

To this convention came nearly 100 delegates. They heard the Dean repeat the anti-Shields accusations which Des Moines students had made last fortnight. These were that Dr. Shields and the University's Secretary-Treasurer, Miss Edith Rebman, had been morally turpitudinous in Los Angeles, Cal., and Waterloo, Iowa, that he and Miss Rebman, both Canadians, were unAmerican, favored Canadian students, that he and Miss Rebman spied on students and the faculty, caused mistrust, friction.

Meanwhile, the original convention closed by re-electing Dr. Shields president and Miss Rebman secretary-treasurer of the board of Des Moines trustees and of the Baptist Bible Union. Cleveland's Delegate Roberts, "big Christian brother'' to Miss Rebman, was elected first vice president.

The Des Moines students sent a telegram to Buffalo declaring they would not return to the University after this college year. Dr. Shields said they were "mis informed." Dean Galloway said the situation was hopeless.