Equality Without Honorary Titles
IN the Methodist General Conference the editor of the Christian Advocate offered a resolution that in the report of the proceedings, in mentioning the names of members, all degrees and honorary titles be omitted. And in speaking to the resolution, he made the following sound and sensible remarks: “As for the degrees, they don’t mean anything. They are not at any time proper objects of distinction, and to put them in is wrong. No man here is colonel. No man here is governor. No man here is a doctor of laws. No man here is judge. Every man here, from the highest to the lowest in stature, and every other way—every man is a natural equal of every other man. Why, therefore, should we stick in these abominable tinsels that made us so contemptible when we went to England in 1891? I absolutely trembled with shame when I saw that those noble men of the Wesleyan body had no degrees, and there was scarcely a man from the United States, whatever his age, history, previous condition of servitude, or anything else, that hadn’t at least a D. D., and a large number had LL. D.” The resolution was adopted. ON the subject of the United States collecting by force the $88,000 from Turkey, the London correspondent of the New York Times, April 22, remarks: “My advice to you would be to try to keep your hands out of that hornet’s nest as long as you can. . . . In trying to get money out of him [the sultan] all the nests of wasps and scorpions in southeastern Europe may be stirred up, with consequences dire.”