52 
EDITORIAL. 
guillotine, and share with other officials the common and uni¬ 
versal liability to discover some day that he has suffered the pro¬ 
cess of capillary amputation ? To-day he may be a meat inspec¬ 
tor, a city Board of Health appointee, a State veterinarian, a chief 
or a simple officer of the Bureau of Animal Industry, but some¬ 
time an election has been held and he walks forth with his official 
head in his hand. He has been guillotined, and only his private 
personal caput as a veterinarian remains on his shoulders to illus¬ 
trate and comprehend the chances of official life. He has leisure 
now to search for the reason of this sudden revolution in his con¬ 
dition, but the only discovery that rewards his reflections is that 
his professional claims and abilities were not strong enough to 
overcome the political “ pull ” of some other man whose “ services 
at the primaries” have been of more value than his.to the man 
who has been elected. 
Well, after all there is nothing very peculiar about this—it is 
“ politics ” merely—we had no right to expect things to be other¬ 
wise ; we did, personally, know of it, but we never dreamed it 
would go quite so far as it seems to have been carried in some 
quarters, and certainly we never had entertained the idea that 
professorships could be cast aside, and competent and hard-work¬ 
ing public servants compelled to resign their positions after ac¬ 
complishing large labors for the common good, and all through 
the operation of political influence. 
We certainly cannot pass over the resignation of Professor 
Billings, of the University of Nebraska, which, if we are correctly 
informed, was brought on through the stress of political motion, 
without a word of protest and without regretting our modest posi¬ 
tion in a post where no “ executeur des hautes oeuvres ” could be 
found to deprive us or any of our confreres of our heads, solely 
because of political power or as a punishment for a difference in 
political opinion. In our capacity of veterinarians, it seems to us 
to be a matter of little importance whether we are known as a 
member of one party or another, or whether the Democratic or 
Republican platform best expresses our political sentiments. Let 
the men who do their work well and to the best of their ability 
be respected for their works’ sake, without impertinent interfer- 
