INTRODUCTION
I
have been asked to write an introduction to the story of "The Bowmen",
on its publication in book form together with three other tales of similar
fashion. And I hesitate. This affair of "The Bowmen" has been such an
odd one from first to last, so many queer complications have entered into it,
there have been so many and so divers currents and cross-currents of rumour and
speculation concerning it, that I honestly do not know where to begin. I
propose, then, to solve the difficulty by apologising for beginning at all.
For,
usually and fitly, the presence of an introduction is held to imply that there
is something of consequence and importance to be introduced. If, for example, a
man has made an anthology of great poetry, he may well write an introduction
justifying his principle of selection, pointing out here and there, as the
spirit moves him, high beauties and supreme excellencies, discoursing of the
magnates and lords and princes of literature, whom he is merely serving as
groom of the chamber. Introductions, that is, belong to the masterpieces and classics
of the world, to the great and ancient and accepted things; and I am here
introducing a short, small story of my own which appeared in _The Evening News_
about ten months ago.
I
appreciate the absurdity, nay, the enormity of the position in all its
grossness. And my excuse for these pages must be this: that though the story
itself is nothing, it has yet had such odd and unforeseen consequences and
adventures that the tale of them may possess some interest. And then, again,
there are certain psychological morals to be drawn from the whole matter of the
tale and its sequel of rumours and discussions that are not, I think, devoid of
consequence; and so to begin at the beginning.
This
was in last August, to be more precise, on the last Sunday of last August.
There were terrible things to be read on that hot Sunday morning between meat
and mass. It was in _The Weekly Dispatch_ that I saw the awful account of the
retreat from Mons. I no longer recollect the details; but I have not forgotten
the impression that was then on my mind, I seemed to see a furnace of torment
and death and agony and terror seven times heated, and in the midst of the
burning was the British Army. In the midst of the flame, consumed by it and yet
aureoled in it, scattered like ashes and yet triumphant, martyred and for ever
glorious. So I saw our men with a shining about them, so I took these thoughts
with me to church, and, I am sorry to say, was making up a story in my head
while the deacon was singing the Gospel.
This
was not the tale of "The Bowmen". It was the first sketch, as it were,
of "The Soldiers' Rest". I only wish I had been able to write it as I
conceived it. The tale as it stands is, I think, a far better piece of craft
than "The Bowmen", but the tale that came to me as the blue incense
floated above the Gospel Book on the desk between the tapers: that indeed was a
noble story-like all the stories that never get written. I conceived the dead
men coming up through the flames and in the flames, and being welcomed in the
Eternal Tavern with songs and flowing cups and everlasting mirth. But every man
is the child of his age, however much he may hate it; and our popular religion
has long determined that jollity is wicked. As far as I can make out modern Protestantism
believes that Heaven is something like Evensong in an English cathedral, the
service by Stainer and the Dean preaching. For those opposed to dogma of any
kind-even the mildest-I suppose it is held that a Course of Ethical Lectures
will be arranged.
Well,
I have long maintained that on the whole the average church, considered as a
house of preaching, is a much more poisonous place than the average tavern;
still, as I say, one's age masters one, and clouds and bewilders the
intelligence, and the real story of "The Soldiers' Rest", with its
"sonus epulantium in æterno convivio", was ruined at the moment of
its birth, and it was some time later that the actual story got written. And in
the meantime the plot of "The Bowmen" occurred to me. Now it has been
murmured and hinted and suggested and whispered in all sorts of quarters that
before I wrote the tale I had heard something. The most decorative of these
legends is also the most precise: "I know for a fact that the whole thing
was given him in typescript by a lady-in-waiting." This was not the case;
and all vaguer reports to the effect that I had heard some rumours or hints of rumours
are equally void of any trace of truth.
Again
I apologise for entering so pompously into the minutiæ of my bit of a story, as
if it were the lost poems of Sappho; but it appears that the subject interests
the public, and I comply with my instructions. I take it, then, that the
origins of "The Bowmen" were composite. First of all, all ages and
nations have cherished the thought that spiritual hosts may come to the help of
earthly arms, that gods and heroes and saints have descended from their high immortal
places to fight for their worshippers and clients. Then Kipling's story of the
ghostly Indian regiment got in my head and got mixed with the mediævalism that
is always there; and so "The Bowmen" was written. I was heartily
disappointed with it, I remember, and thought it-as I still think it-an
indifferent piece of work. However, I have tried to write for these thirty-five
long years, and if I have not become practised in letters, I am at least a past
master in the Lodge of Disappointment. Such as it was, "The Bowmen"
appeared in _The Evening News_ of September 29th, 1914.
Now
the journalist does not, as a rule, dwell much on the prospect of fame; and if
he be an evening journalist, his anticipations of immortality are bounded by
twelve o'clock at night at the latest; and it may well be that those insects
which begin to live in the morning and are dead by sunset deem themselves
immortal. Having written my story, having groaned and growled over it and
printed it, I certainly never thought to hear another word of it. My colleague
"The Londoner" praised it warmly to my face, as his kindly fashion
is; entering, very properly, a technical caveat as to the language of the
battle-cries of the bowmen. "Why should English archers use French
terms?" he said. I replied that the only reason was this-that a
"Monseigneur" here and there struck me as picturesque; and I reminded
him that, as a matter of cold historical fact, most of the archers of Agincourt
were mercenaries from Gwent, my native country, who would appeal to Mihangel
and to saints not known to the Saxons-Teilo, Iltyd, Dewi, Cadwaladyr Vendigeid.
And I thought that that was the first and last discussion of "The
Bowmen". But in a few days from its publication the editor of _The Occult
Review_ wrote to me. He wanted to know whether the story had any foundation in
fact. I told him that it had no foundation in fact of any kind or sort; I
forget whether I added that it had no foundation in rumour but I should think
not, since to the best of my belief there were no rumours of heavenly
interposition in existence at that time. Certainly I had heard of none. Soon
afterwards the editor of _Light_ wrote asking a like question, and I made him a
like reply. It seemed to me that I had stifled any "Bowmen" mythos in
the hour of its birth.
A
month or two later, I received several requests from editors of parish
magazines to reprint the story. I - or, rather, my editor - readily gave
permission; and then, after another month or two, the conductor of one of these
magazines wrote to me, saying that the February issue containing the story had
been sold out, while there was still a great demand for it. Would I allow them
to reprint "The Bowmen" as a pamphlet, and would I write a short
preface giving the exact authorities for the story? I replied that they might
reprint in pamphlet form with all my heart, but that I could not give my authorities,
since I had none, the tale being pure invention. The priest wrote again,
suggesting-to my amazement-that I must be mistaken, that the main
"facts" of "The Bowmen" must be true, that my share in the
matter must surely have been confined to the elaboration and decoration of a
veridical history. It seemed that my light fiction had been accepted by the
congregation of this particular church as the
solidest of facts; and it was
then that it began to dawn on me that if I had failed in the art of letters, I
had succeeded, unwittingly, in the art of deceit. This happened, I should
think, some time in April, and the snowball of rumour that was then set rolling
has been rolling ever since, growing bigger and bigger, till it is now swollen
to a monstrous size.
It
was at about this period that variants of my tale began to be told as authentic
histories. At first, these tales betrayed their relation to their original. In
several of them the vegetarian restaurant appeared, and St. George was the
chief character. In one case an officer-name and address missing-said that
there was a portrait of St. George in a certain London restaurant, and that a
figure, just like the portrait, appeared to him on the battlefield, and was
invoked by him, with the happiest results. Another variant-this, I think, never
got into print-told how dead Prussians had been found on the battlefield with
arrow wounds in their bodies. This notion amused me, as I had imagined a scene,
when I was thinking out the story, in which a German general was to appear
before the Kaiser to explain his failure to annihilate the English.
"All-Highest,"
the general was to say, "it is true, it is impossible to deny it. The men
were killed by arrows; the shafts were found in their bodies by the burying
parties."
I
rejected the idea as over-precipitous even for a mere fantasy. I was therefore
entertained when I found that what I had refused as too fantastical for fantasy
was accepted in certain occult circles as hard fact.
Other
versions of the story appeared in which a cloud interposed between the
attacking Germans and the defending British. In some examples the cloud served
to conceal our men from the advancing enemy; in others, it disclosed shining
shapes which frightened the horses of the pursuing German cavalry. St. George,
it will he noted, has disappeared-he persisted some time longer in certain
Roman Catholic variants-and there are no more bowmen, no more arrows. But so
far angels are not mentioned; yet they are ready to appear, and I think that I
have detected the machine which brought them into the story.
In
"The Bowmen" my imagined soldier saw "a long line of shapes,
with a shining about them." And Mr. A.P. Sinnett, writing in the May issue
of _The Occult Review_, reporting what he had heard, states that "those who
could see said they saw 'a row of shining beings' between the two armies."
Now I conjecture that the word "shining" is the link between my tale
and the derivative from it. In the popular view shining and benevolent
supernatural beings are angels, and so, I believe, the Bowmen of my story have
become "the Angels of Mons." In this shape they have been received
with respect and credence everywhere, or almost everywhere.
And
here, I conjecture, we have the key to the large popularity of the delusion-as
I think it. We have long ceased in England to take much interest in saints, and
in the recent revival of the cultus of St.George, the saint is little more than
a patriotic figurehead. And the appeal to the saints to succour us is certainly
not a common English practice; it is held Popish by most of our countrymen. But
angels, with certain reservations, have retained their popularity, and so, when
it was settled that the English army in its dire peril was delivered by angelic
aid, the way was clear for general belief, and for the enthusiasms of the
religion of the man in the street. And so
soon as the legend got the title
"The Angels of Mons" it became impossible to avoid it. It permeated
the Press: it would not be neglected; it appeared in the most unlikely quarters-in
_Truth_ and _Town Topics_, _The New Church Weekly_ (Swedenborgian) and _John Bull_.
The editor of _The Church Times_ has exercised a wise reserve: he awaits that
evidence which so far is lacking; but in one issue of the paper I noted that
the story furnished a text for a sermon, the subject of a letter, and the matter
for an article. People send me cuttings from provincial papers containing hot
controversy as to the exact nature of the appearances; the "Office
Window" of _The Daily Chronicle_ suggests scientific explanations of the
hallucination; the _Pall Mall_ in a note about St. James says he is of the
brotherhood of the Bowmen of Mons-this reversion to the bowmen from the angels
being possibly due to the strong statements that I have made on the matter. The
pulpits both of the Church and of Non-conformity have been busy: Bishop
Welldon, Dean Hensley Henson (a disbeliever), Bishop Taylor Smith (the
Chaplain-General), and many other clergy have occupied themselves with the
matter. Dr. Horton preached about the "angels" at Manchester; Sir
Joseph Compton Rickett (President of the National Federation of Free Church
Councils) stated that the soldiers at the front had seen visions and dreamed
dreams, and had given testimony of powers and principalities fighting for them
or against them. Letters come from all the ends of the earth to the Editor of
_The Evening News_ with theories, beliefs, explanations, suggestions. It is all
somewhat wonderful; one can say that the whole affair is a psychological
phenomenon of considerable interest, fairly comparable with the great Russian
delusion of last August and September.
* *
* * *
Now
it is possible that some persons, judging by the tone of these remarks of mine,
may gather the impression that I am a profound disbeliever in the possibility
of any intervention of the super-physical order in the affairs of the physical
order. They will be mistaken if they make this inference; they will be mistaken
if they suppose that I think miracles in Judæa credible but miracles in France or
Flanders incredible. I hold no such absurdities. But I confess, very frankly,
that I credit none of the "Angels of Mons" legends, partly because I
see, or think I see, their derivation from my own idle fiction, but chiefly
because I have, so far, not received one jot or tittle of evidence that should
dispose me to belief. It is idle, indeed, and foolish enough for a man to say:
"I am sure that story is a lie, because the supernatural element enters
into it;" here, indeed, we have the maggot writhing in the midst of
corrupted offal denying the existence of the sun. But if this fellow be a fool -
as he is- equally foolish is he who says, "If the tale has anything of the
supernatural it is true, and the less evidence the better;" and I am afraid
this tends to be the attitude of many who call themselves occultists. I hope
that I shall never get to that frame of mind. So I say, not that super-normal
interventions are impossible, not that they have not happened during this war-I
know nothing as to that point, one way or the other-but that there is not one
atom of evidence (so far) to support the current stories of the angels of Mons.
For, be it remarked, these stories are specific stories. They rest on the
second, third, fourth, fifth hand stories told by "a soldier," by
"an officer," by "a Catholic correspondent," by "a
nurse," by any number of anonymous people. Indeed, names have been
mentioned. A lady's name has been drawn, most unwarrantably as it appears to
me, into the discussion, and I have no doubt that this lady has been subject to
a good deal of pestering and annoyance. She has written to the Editor of _The
Evening News_ denying all knowledge of the supposed miracle. The Psychical
Research Society's expert confesses that no real evidence has been proffered to
her Society on the matter. And then, to my amazement, she accepts as fact the
proposition that some men on the battlefield have been
"hallucinated," and proceeds to give the theory of sensory
hallucination. She forgets that, by her own showing, there is no reason to
suppose that anybody has been hallucinated at all. Someone (unknown) has met a
nurse (unnamed) who has talked to a soldier (anonymous) who has seen angels.
But _that_ is not evidence; and not even Sam Weller at his gayest would have
dared to offer it as such in the Court of Common Pleas. So far, then, nothing
remotely approaching proof has been offered as to any supernatural intervention
during the Retreat from Mons. Proof may come; if so, it will be interesting and
more than interesting.
But,
taking the affair as it stands at present, how is it that a nation plunged in
materialism of the grossest kind has accepted idle rumours and gossip of the
supernatural as certain truth? The answer is contained in the question: it is
precisely because our whole atmosphere is materialist that we are ready to
credit anything-save the truth. Separate a man from good drink, he will swallow
methylated spirit with joy. Man is created to be inebriated; to be "nobly
wild, not mad." Suffer the Cocoa Prophets and their company to seduce him
in body and spirit, and he will get himself stuff that will make him ignobly
wild and mad indeed. It took hard, practical men of affairs, business men,
advanced thinkers, Freethinkers, to believe in Madame Blavatsky and Mahatmas
and the famous message from the Golden Shore: "Judge's plan is right;
follow him and _stick_."
And
the main responsibility for this dismal state of affairs undoubtedly lies on
the shoulders of the majority of the clergy of the Church of England.
Christianity, as Mr. W.L. Courtney has so admirably pointed out, is a great
Mystery Religion; it is _the_ Mystery Religion. Its priests are called to an
awful and tremendous hierurgy; its pontiffs are to be the pathfinders, the
bridge-makers between the world of sense and the world of spirit. And, in fact,
they pass their time in preaching, not the eternal mysteries, but a twopenny
morality, in changing the Wine of Angels and the Bread of Heaven into
gingerbeer and mixed biscuits: a sorry transubstantiation, a sad alchemy, as it
seems to me.
THE BOWMEN
It was during
the Retreat of the Eighty Thousand, and the authority of the Censorship is
sufficient excuse for not being more explicit. But it was on the most awful day
of that awful time, on the day when ruin and disaster came so near that their
shadow fell over London far away; and, without any certain news, the hearts of
men failed within them and grew faint; as if the agony of the army in the
battlefield had entered into their souls.
On
this dreadful day, then, when three hundred thousand men in arms with all their
artillery swelled like a flood against the little English company, there was
one point above all other points in our battle line that was for a time in
awful danger, not merely of defeat, but of utter annihilation. With the
permission of the Censorship and
of the military expert, this
corner may, perhaps, be described as a salient, and if this angle were crushed
and broken, then the English force as a whole would be shattered, the Allied
left would be turned, and Sedan would inevitably follow.
All
the morning the German guns had thundered and shrieked against this corner, and
against the thousand or so of men who held it. The men joked at the shells, and
found funny names for them, and had bets about them, and greeted them with
scraps of music-hall songs. But the shells came on and burst, and tore good
Englishmen limb from limb, and tore brother from brother, and as the heat of
the day increased so did the fury of that terrific cannonade. There was no
help, it seemed. The English artillery was good, but there was not nearly
enough of it; it was being steadily battered into scrap iron.
There
comes a moment in a storm at sea when people say to one another, "It is at
its worst; it can blow no harder," and then there is a blast ten times
more fierce than any before it. So it was in these British trenches.
There
were no stouter hearts in the whole world than the hearts of these men; but
even they were appalled as this seven-times-heated hell of the German cannonade
fell upon them and overwhelmed them and destroyed them. And at this very moment
they saw from their trenches that a tremendous host was moving against their
lines. Five hundred of the thousand remained, and as far as they could see the
German infantry was pressing on against them, column upon column, a grey world
of men, ten thousand of them, as it appeared afterwards.
There
was no hope at all. They shook hands, some of them. One man improvised a new
version of the battlesong, "Good-bye, good-bye to Tipperary," ending
with "And we shan't get there". And they all went on firing steadily.
The officers pointed out that such an opportunity for high-class, fancy
shooting might never occur again; the Germans dropped line after line; the
Tipperary humorist asked, "What price Sidney Street?" And the few
machine guns did their best. But everybody knew it was of no use. The dead grey
bodies lay in companies and battalions, as others came on and on and on, and
they swarmed and stirred and advanced from beyond and beyond.
"World
without end. Amen," said one of the British soldiers with some irrelevance
as he took aim and fired. And then he remembered-he says he cannot think why or
wherefore-a queer vegetarian restaurant in London where he had once or twice
eaten eccentric dishes of cutlets made of lentils and nuts that pretended to be
steak. On all the plates in this restaurant there was printed a figure of St.
George in blue, with the motto, _Adsit Anglis Sanctus Geogius_-May St. George
be a present help to the English. This soldier happened to know Latin and other
useless things, and now, as he fired at his man in the grey advancing mass-300
yards away-he uttered the pious vegetarian motto. He went on firing to the end,
and at last Bill on his right had to clout him cheerfully over the head to make
him stop, pointing out as he did so that the King's ammunition cost money and
was not lightly to be wasted in drilling funny patterns into dead Germans.
For
as the Latin scholar uttered his invocation he felt something between a shudder
and an electric shock pass through his body. The roar of the battle died down
in his ears to a gentle murmur; instead of it, he says, he heard a great voice
and a shout louder than a thunder-peal crying, "Array, array, array!"
His
heart grew hot as a burning coal, it grew cold as ice within him, as it seemed
to him that a tumult of voices answered to his summons. He heard, or seemed to
hear, thousands shouting: "St. George! St. George!"
"Ha!
messire; ha! sweet Saint, grant us good deliverance!"
"St.
George for merry England!"
"Harow!
Harow! Monseigneur St. George, succour us."
"Ha!
St. George! Ha! St. George! a long bow and a strong bow."
"Heaven's
Knight, aid us!"
And
as the soldier heard these voices he saw before him, beyond the trench, a long
line of shapes, with a shining about them. They were like men who drew the bow,
and with another shout their cloud of arrows flew singing and tingling through
the air towards the German hosts.
The
other men in the trench were firing all the while. They had no hope; but they
aimed just as if they had been shooting at Bisley. Suddenly one of them lifted
up his voice in the plainest English, "Gawd help us!" he bellowed to
the man next to him, "but we're blooming marvels! Look at those grey...
gentlemen, look at them! D'ye see them? They're not going down in dozens, nor
in 'undreds; it's thousands, it is. Look! look! there's a regiment gone while
I'm talking to ye."
"Shut
it!" the other soldier bellowed, taking aim, "what are ye gassing
about!"
But
he gulped with astonishment even as he spoke, for, indeed, the grey men were
falling by the thousands. The English could hear the guttural scream of the
German officers, the crackle of their revolvers as they shot the reluctant; and
still line after line crashed to the earth.
All
the while the Latin-bred soldier heard the cry: "Harow! Harow! Monseigneur,
dear saint, quick to our aid! St. George help us!"
"High
Chevalier, defend us!"
The
singing arrows fled so swift and thick that they darkened the air; the heathen
horde melted from before them.
"More
machine guns!" Bill yelled to Tom.
"Don't
hear them," Tom yelled back. "But, thank God, anyway; they've got it
in the neck."
In
fact, there were ten thousand dead German soldiers left before that salient of
the English army, and consequently there was no Sedan. In Germany, a country
ruled by scientific principles, the Great General Staff decided that the
contemptible English must have employed shells containing an unknown gas of a
poisonous nature, as no wounds were discernible on the bodies of the dead
German soldiers. But the man who knew what nuts tasted like when they called
themselves steak knew also that St. George had brought his Agincourt Bowmen to
help the English.
THE SOLDIERS' REST
The soldier
with the ugly wound in the head opened his eyes at last, and looked about him
with an air of pleasant satisfaction.
He
still felt drowsy and dazed with some fierce experience through which he had
passed, but so far he could not recollect much about it. But-an agreeable glow
began to steal about his heart-such a glow as comes to people who have been in
a tight place and have come through it better than they had expected. In its
mildest form this set of emotions may be observed in passengers who have
crossed the Channel on a windy day without being sick. They triumph a little
internally, and are suffused with vague, kindly feelings.
The
wounded soldier was somewhat of this disposition as he opened his eyes, pulled
himself together, and looked about him. He felt a sense of delicious ease and repose
in bones that had been racked and weary, and deep in the heart that had so
lately been tormented there was an assurance of comfort-of the battle won. The
thundering, roaring waves were passed; he had entered into the haven of calm
waters. After fatigues and terrors that as yet he could not recollect he seemed
now to be resting in the easiest of all easy chairs in a dim, low room.
In
the hearth there was a glint of fire and a blue, sweet-scented puff of wood
smoke; a great black oak beam roughly hewn crossed the ceiling. Through the
leaded panes of the windows he saw a rich glow of sunlight, green lawns, and
against the deepest and most radiant of all blue skies the wonderful far-lifted
towers of a vast, Gothic cathedral-mystic, rich with imagery.
"Good
Lord!" he murmured to himself. "I didn't know they had such places in
France. It's just like Wells. And it might be the other day when I was going
past the Swan, just as it might be past that window, and asked the ostler what
time it was, and he says, 'What time? Why, summer-time'; and there outside it
looks like summer that would last for ever. If this was an inn they ought to
call it _The Soldiers' Rest_."
He
dozed off again, and when he opened his eyes once more a kindly looking man in
some sort of black robe was standing by him.
"It's
all right now, isn't it?" he said, speaking in good English.
"Yes,
thank you, sir, as right as can be. I hope to be back again soon."
"Well
well; but how did you come here? Where did you get that?" He pointed to
the wound on the soldier's forehead.
The
soldier put his hand: up to his brow and looked dazed and puzzled.
"Well,
sir," he said at last, "it was like this, to begin at the beginning.
You know how we came over in August, and there we were in the thick of it, as
you might say, in a day or two. An awful time it was, and I don't know how I
got through it alive. My best friend was killed dead beside me as we lay in the
trenches. By Cambrai, I think it was.
"Then
things got a little quieter for a bit, and I was quartered in a village for the
best part of a week. She was a very nice lady where I was, and she treated me
proper with the best of everything. Her husband he was fighting; but she had
the nicest little boy I ever knew, a little fellow of five, or six it might be,
and we got on splendid. The amount of their lingo that kid taught me-'We, we'
and 'Bong swot' and 'Commong voo potty we' and all-and I taught him English.
You should have heard that nipper say ''Arf a mo', old un!' It was a treat.
"Then
one day we got surprised. There was about a dozen of us in the village, and two
or three hundred Germans came down on us early one morning. They got us; no
help for 'it. Before we could shoot.
"Well
there we were. They tied our hands behind our backs, and smacked our faces and
kicked us a bit, and we were lined up opposite the house where I'd been
staying.
"And
then that poor little chap broke away from his mother, and he run out and saw
one of the Boshes, as we call them, fetch me one over the jaw with his clenched
fist. Oh dear! oh dear! he might have done it a dozen times if only that little
child hadn't seen him.
"He
had a poor bit of a toy I'd bought him at the village shop; a toy gun it was.
And out he came running, as I say, Crying out something in French like 'Bad
man! bad man! don't hurt my Anglish or I shoot you'; and he pointed that gun at
the German soldier. The German, he took his bayonet, and he drove it right
through the poor little chap's throat."
The
soldier's face worked and twitched and twisted itself into a sort of grin, and
he sat grinding his teeth and staring at the man in the black robe. He was
silent for a little. And then he found his voice, and the oaths rolled
terrible, thundering from him, as he cursed that murderous wretch, and bade him
go down and burn for ever in hell. And the tears were raining down his face,
and they choked him at last.
"I
beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure," he said, "especially you being a minister
of some kind, I suppose; but I can't help it, he was such a dear little
man."
The
man in black murmured something to himself: "_Pretiosa in conspectu Domini
mors innocentium ejus_"-Dear in the sight of the Lord is the death of His
innocents. Then he put a hand very gently on the soldier's shoulder.
"Never
mind," said he; "I've seen some service in my time, myself. But what
about that wound?"
"Oh,
that; that's nothing. But I'll tell you how I got it. It was just like this.
The Germans had us fair, as I tell you, and they shut us up in a barn in the
village; just flung us on the ground and left us to starve seemingly. They
barred up the big door of the barn, and put a sentry there, and thought we were
all right.
"There
were sort of slits like very narrow windows in one of the walls, and on the
second day it was, I was looking out of these slits down the street, and I
could see those German devils were up to mischief. They were planting their
machine-guns everywhere handy where an ordinary man coming up the street would
never see them, but I see them, and I see the infantry lining up behind the
garden walls. Then I had a sort of a notion of what was coming; and presently,
sure enough, I could hear some of our chaps singing 'Hullo, hullo, hullo!' in
the distance; and I says to myself, 'Not this time.'
"So
I looked about me, and I found a hole under the wall; a kind of a drain I
should think it was, and I found I could just squeeze through. And I got out
and crept, round, and away I goes running down the street, yelling for all I
was worth, just as our chaps were getting round the corner at the bottom.
'Bang, bang!' went the guns, behind me and in front of me, and on each side of
me, and then-bash! Something hit me on the head and over I went; and I don't
remember anything more till I woke up here just now."
The
soldier lay back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened
them he saw that there were other people in the room besides the minister in
the black robes. One was a man in a big black cloak. He had a grim old face and
a great beaky nose. He shook the soldier by the hand.
"By
God! sir," he said, "you're a credit to the British Army; you're a damned
fine soldier and a good man, and, by God! I'm proud to shake hands with
you."
And
then someone came out of the shadow, someone in queer clothes such as the soldier
had seen worn by the heralds when he had been on duty at the opening of
Parliament by the King.
"Now,
by _Corpus Domini_," this man said, "of all knights ye be noblest and
gentlest, and ye be of fairest report, and now ye be a brother of the noblest
brotherhood that ever was since this world's beginning, since ye have yielded
dear life for your friends' sake."
The
soldier did not understand what the man was saying to him. There were others,
too, in strange dresses, who came and spoke to him. Some spoke in what sounded
like French. He cduld not make it out; but he knew that they all spoke kindly
and praised him.
"What
does it all mean?" he said to the minister. "What are they talking
about? They don't think I'd let down my pals?"
"Drink
this," said the minister, and he handed the soldier a great silver cup,
brimming with wine.
The
soldier took a deep draught, and in that moment all his sorrows passed from
him.
"What
is it?" he asked?
"_Vin
nouveau du Royaume_," said the minister. "New Wine of the Kingdom,
you call it." And then he bent down and murmured in the soldier's ear.
"What,"
said the wounded man, "the place they used to tell us about in Sunday
school? With such drink and such joy-"
His
voice was hushed. For as he looked at the minister the fashion of his vesture
was changed. The black robe seemed to melt away from him. He was all in armour,
if armour be made of starlight, of the rose of dawn, and of sunset fires; and
he lifted up a great sword of flame.
Full in the midst, his Cross of Red
Triumphant Michael brandished,
And trampled the Apostate's pride.
THE MONSTRANCE
Then it fell out in the sacring of the Mass
that right as the priest heaved up the
Host there came a beam redder than any rose and smote upon it, and then it was changed bodily
into the shape and fashion of a Child
having his arms stretched forth, as he had been nailed upon the Tree.-Old Romance.
So far things
were going very well indeed. The night was thick and black and cloudy, and the
German force had come three-quarters of their way or more without an alarm.
There was no challenge from the English lines; and indeed the English were
being kept busy by a high shell-fire on their front. This had been the German
plan; and it was coming off admirably. Nobody thought that there was any danger
on the left; and so the Prussians, writhing on their stomachs over the ploughed
field, were drawing nearer and nearer to the wood. Once there they could
establish themselves comfortably and securely during what remained of the
night; and at dawn the English left would be hopelessly enfiladed-and there would
be another of those movements which people who really understand military
matters call "readjustments of our line."
The
noise made by the men creeping and crawling over the fields was drowned by the
cannonade, from the English side as well as the German. On the English centre
and right things were indeed very brisk; the big guns were thundering and
shrieking and roaring, the machine-guns were keeping up the very devil's
racket; the flares and illuminating shells were as good as the Crystal Palace
in the old days, as the soldiers said to one another. All this had been thought
of and thought out on the other side. The German force was beautifully
organised. The men who crept nearer and nearer to the wood carried quite a
number of machine guns in bits on their backs; others of them had small bags
full of sand; yet others big bags that were empty. When the wood was reached the
sand from the small bags was to be emptied into the big bags; the machine-gun
parts were to be put together, the guns mounted behind the sandbag redoubt, and
then, as Major Von und Zu pleasantly observed, "the English pigs shall to
gehenna-fire quickly come."
The
major was so well pleased with the way things had gone that he permitted
himself a very low and guttural chuckle; in another ten minutes success would
be assured. He half turned his head round to whisper a caution about some
detail of the sandbag business to the big sergeant-major, Karl Heinz, who was
crawling just behind him. At that instant Karl Heinz leapt into the air with a
scream that rent through the night and through all the roaring of the
artillery. He cried in a terrible voice, "The Glory of the Lord!" and
plunged and pitched forward, stone dead. They said that his face as he stood up
there and cried aloud was as if it had been seen through a sheet of flame.
"They"
were one or two out of the few who got back to the German lines. Most of the
Prussians stayed in the ploughed field. Karl Heinz's scream had frozen the
blood of the English soldiers, but it had also ruined the major's plans. He and
his men, caught all unready, clumsy with the burdens that they carried, were
shot to pieces; hardly a score of them returned. The rest of the force were
attended to by an English burying party. According to custom the dead men were
searched before they were buried, and some singular relies of the campaign were
found upon them, but nothing so singular as Karl Heinz's diary.
He
had been keeping it for some time. It began with entries about bread and
sausage and the ordinary incidents of the trenches; here and there Karl wrote
about an old grandfather, and a big china pipe, and pinewoods and roast goose.
Then the diarist seemed to get fidgety about his health. Thus:
April 17.-Annoyed for some days by murmuring
sounds in my head. I trust I shall not
become deaf, like my departed uncle Christopher.
April 20.-The noise in my head grows worse;
it is a humming sound. It distracts me;
twice I have failed to hear the captain and have been reprimanded.
April 22.-So bad is my head that I go to see
the doctor. He speaks of tinnitus, and
gives me an inhaling apparatus that shall reach, he says, the middle ear.
April 25.-The apparatus is of no use. The
sound is now become like the booming of
a great church bell. It reminds me of the bell at St. Lambart on that terrible day of last August.
April 26.-I could swear that it is the bell
of St. Lambart that I hear all the
time. They rang it as the procession came out of the church.
The man's
writing, at first firm enough, begins to straggle unevenly over the page at
this point. The entries show that he became convinced that he heard the bell of
St. Lambart's Church ringing, though (as he knew better than most men) there
had been no bell and no church at St. Lambart's since the summer of 1914. There
was no village either-the whole place was a rubbish-heap.
Then
the unfortunate Karl Heinz was beset with other troubles.
May 2.-I fear I am becoming ill. To-day
Joseph Kleist, who is next to me in the
trench, asked me why I jerked my head to the right so constantly. I told him to hold his tongue;
but this shows that I am noticed. I
keep fancying that there is something white just beyond the
range of my sight on the right hand.
May 3.-This whiteness is now quite clear, and
in front of me. All this day it has
slowly passed before me. I asked Joseph Kleist if he saw a piece of newspaper just beyond the
trench. He stared at me solemnly-he is
a stupid fool-and said, "There is no paper."
May 4.-It looks like a white robe. There was
a strong smell of incense to-day in the
trench. No one seemed to notice it. There is decidedly a white robe, and I think I can see
feet, passing very slowly before me at this moment while I write.
There is no
space here for continuous extracts from Karl Heinz's diary. But to condense
with severity, it would seem that he slowly gathered about himself a complete
set of sensory hallucinations. First the auditory hallucination of the sound of
a bell, which the doctor called tinnitus. Then a patch of white growing into a
white robe, then the smell of incense. At last he lived in two worlds. He saw
his trench, and the level before it, and the English lines; he talked with his comrades
and obeyed orders, though with a certain difficulty; but he also heard the deep
boom of St. Lambart's bell, and saw continually advancing towards him a white
procession of little children, led by a boy who was swinging a censer. There is
one extraordinary entry: "But in August those children carried no lilies;
now they have lilies in their hands. Why should they have lilies?"
It
is interesting to note the transition over the border line. After May 2 there
is no reference in the diary to bodily illness, with two notable exceptions. Up
to and including that date the sergeant knows that he is suffering from
illusions; after that he accepts his hallucinations as actualities. The man who
cannot see what he sees and hear what he hears is a fool. So he writes: "I
ask who is singing 'Ave Maria Stella.' That blockhead Friedrich Schumacher
raises his crest and answers insolently that no one sings, since singing is
strictly forbidden for the present."
A
few days before the disastrous night expedition the last figure in the
procession appeared to those sick eyes.
The old priest now comes in his golden robe,
the two boys holding each side of it.
He is looking just as he did when he died, save that when he walked in St. Lambart there was
no shining round his head. But this is
illusion and contrary to reason, since no one has a shining about his head. I must take some
medicine.
Note
here that Karl Heinz absolutely accepts the appearance of the martyred priest
of St. Lambart as actual, while he thinks that the halo must be an illusion;
and so he reverts again to his physical condition.
The
priest held up both his hands, the diary states, "as if there were something
between them. But there is a sort of cloud or dimness over this object,
whatever it may be. My poor Aunt Kathie suffered much from her eyes in her old
age."
* *
* * *
One can guess
what the priest of St. Lambart carried in his hands when he and the little
children went out into the hot sunlight to implore mercy, while the great
resounding bell of St. Lambart boomed over the plain. Karl Heinz knew what
happened then; they said that it was he who killed the old priest and helped to
crucify the little child against the church door. The baby was only three years
old. He died calling piteously for "mummy" and "daddy."
* *
* * *
And
those who will may guess what Karl Heinz saw when the mist cleared from before
the monstrance in the priest's hands. Then he shrieked and died.
THE DAZZLING LIGHT
The new head-covering is made of heavy steel,
which has been specialty treated to
increase its resisting power. The walls protecting the skull are particularly
thick, and the weight of the helmet renders its use in open warfare out of the
question. The rim is large, like that of the headpiece of Mambrino, and the
soldier can at will either bring the helmet forward and protect his eyes or wear
it so as to protect the base of the skull.. Military experts admit that
continuance of the present trench warfare may lead to those engaged in it,
especially bombing parties and barbed wire cutters, being more heavily armoured
than the knights, who ought at Bouvines and at Agincourt.-_The Times_, July 22,
1915
The war is
already a fruitful mother of legends. Some people think that there are too many
war legends, and a Croydon gentleman-or lady, I am not sure which-wrote to me
quite recently telling me that a certain particular legend, which I will not
specify, had become the "chief horror of the war." There may be
something to be said for this point of view, but it strikes me as interesting
that the old myth-making faculty has survived into these days, a relic of
noble, far-off Homeric battles. And after all, what do we know? It does not do
to be too sure that this, that, or the other hasn't happened and couldn't have
happened.
What
follows, at any rate, has no claim to be considered either as legend or as
myth. It is merely one of the odd circumstances of these times, and I have no
doubt it can easily be "explained away." In fact, the rationalistic
explanation of the whole thing is patent and on the surface. There is only one
little difficulty, and that, I fancy, is by no means insuperable. In any case
this one knot or tangle may be put down as a queer coincidence and nothing
more.
Here,
then, is the curiosity or oddity in question. A young fellow, whom we will call
for avoidance of all identification Delamere Smith - he is now Lieutenant
Delamere Smith-was spending his holidays on the coast of west South Wales at
the beginning of the war. He was something or other not very important in the
City, and in his leisure hours he smattered lightly and agreeably a little
literature, a little art, a little antiquarianism. He liked the Italian
primitives, he knew the difference between first, second, and third pointed, he
had looked through Boutell's "Engraved Brasses." He had been heard
indeed to speak with enthusiasm of the brasses of Sir Robert de Septvans and
Sir Roger de Trumpington.
One
morning-he thinks it must have been the morning of August 16, 1914-the sun
shone so brightly into his room that he woke early, and the fancy took him that
it would be fine to sit on the cliffs in the pure sunlight. So he dressed and
went out, and climbed up Giltar Point, and sat there enjoying the sweet air and
the radiance of the sea, and the sight of the fringe of creaming foam about the
grey foundations of St. Margaret's Island. Then he looked beyond and gazed at
the new white monastery on Caldy, and wondered who the architect was, and how
he had contrived to make the group of buildings look exactly like the
background of a mediæval picture.
After
about an hour of this and a couple of pipes, Smith confesses that he began to
feel extremely drowsy. He was just wondering whether it would be pleasant to
stretch himself out on the wild thyme that scented the high place and go to
sleep till breakfast, when the mounting sun caught one of the monastery
windows, and Smith stared sleepily at the darting flashing light till it
dazzled him. Then he felt "queer." There was an odd sensation as if
the top of his head were dilating and contracting, and then he says he had a
sort of shock, something between a mild current of electricity and the sensation
of putting one's hand into the ripple of a swift brook.
Now, what
happened next Smith cannot describe at all clearly. He knew he was on Giltar,
looking across the waves to Caldy; he heard all the while the hollow, booming
tide in the caverns of the rocks far below him, And yet he saw, as if in a
glass, a very different country - a level fenland cut by slow streams, by long
avenues of trimmed trees.
"It
looked," he says, "as if it ought to have been a lonely country, but
it was swarming with men; they were thick as ants in an anthill. And they were
all dressed in armour; that was the strange thing about it.
"I
thought I was standing by what looked as if it had been a farmhouse; but it was
all battered to bits, just a heap of ruins and rubbish. All that was left was
one tall round chimney, shaped very much like the fifteenth-century chimneys in
Pembrokeshire. And thousands and tens of thousands went marching by.
"They
were all in armour, and in all sorts of armour. Some of them had overlapping
tongues of bright metal fastened on their clothes, others were in chain mail
from head to foot, others were in heavy plate armour.
"They wore helmets of all
shapes and sorts and sizes. One regiment had steel caps with wide trims,
something like the old barbers' basins. Another
lot had knights' tilting helmets on, closed up so that you couldn't see their
faces. Most of them wore metal gauntlets, either of steel rings or plates, and
they had steel over their boots. A great many had things like battle-maces
swinging by their sides, and all these fellows carried a sort of string of big
metal balls round their waist. Then a dozen regiments went by, every man with a
steel shield slung over his shoulder. The last to go by were
cross-bowmen."
In
fact, it appeared to Delamere Smith that he watched the passing of a host of
men in mediæval armour before him, and yet he knew-by the position of the sun
and of a rosy cloud that was passing over the Worm's Head-that this vision, or
whatever it was, only lasted a second or two. Then that slight sense of shock
returned, and Smith returned to the contemplation of the physical phenomena of
the Pembrokeshire coast-blue waves, grey St. Margaret's, and Caldy Abbey white
in the sunlight.
It
will be said, no doubt, and very likely with truth, that Smith fell asleep on
Giltar, and mingled in a dream the thought of the great war just begun with his
smatterings of mediæval battle and arms and armour. The explanation seems
tolerable enough.
But
there is the one little difficulty. It has been said that Smith is now
Lieutenant Smith. He got his commission last autumn, and went out in May. He
happens to speak French rather well, and so he has become what is called, I
believe, an officer of liaison, or some such term. Anyhow, he is often behind
the French lines.
He
was home on short leave last week, and said:
"Ten
days ago I was ordered to --. I got there early in the morning, and had to wait
a bit before I could see the General. I looked about me, and there on the left
of us was a farm shelled into a heap of ruins, with one round chimney standing,
shaped like the 'Flemish' chimneys in Pembrokeshire. And then the men in armour
marched by, just as I had seen them-French regiments. The things like
battle-maces were bomb-throwers, and the metal balls round the men's waists
were the bombs. They told me that the cross-bows were used for bomb-shooting.
"The
march I saw was part of a big movement; you will hear more of it
before long."
THE BOWMEN AND OTHER NOBLE GHOSTS
By "The Londoner"
There was a
journalist - and the _Evening News_ reader well knows the initials of his name-who
lately sat down to write a story.
* * *
Of course his
story had to be about the war; there are no other stories nowadays. And so he
wrote of English soldiers who, in the dusk on a field of France, faced the
sullen mass of the oncoming Huns. They were few against fearful odds, but, as
they sent the breech-bolt home and aimed and fired, they became aware that
others fought beside them. Down the air came cries to St. George and twanging
of the bow-string; the old bowmen of England had risen at England's need from
their graves in that French earth and were fighting for England.
* * *
He
said that he made up that story by himself, that he sat down and wrote it out
of his head. But others knew better. It must really have happened. There was, I
remember, a clergyman of good credit who told him that he was clean mistaken;
the archers had really and truly risen up to fight for England: the tale was
all up and down the front.
For
my part I had thought that he wrote out of his head; I had seen him at the
detestable job of doing it. I myself have hated this business of writing ever
since I found out that it was not so easy as it looks, and I can always spare a
little sympathy for a man who is driving a pen to the task of putting words in
their right places. Yet the clergyman persuaded me at last. Who am I that I
should doubt the faith of a clerk in holy orders? It must have happened. Those
archers fought for us, and the grey-goose feather has flown once again in English
battle.
* * *
Since
that day I look eagerly for the ghosts who must be taking their share in this
world-war. Never since the world began was such a war as this: surely
Marlborough and the Duke, Talbot and Harry of Monmouth, and many another
shadowy captain must be riding among our horsemen. The old gods of war are
wakened by this loud clamour of the guns.
* * *
All the lands
are astir. It is not enough that Asia should be humming like an angry hive and
the far islands in arms, Australia sending her young men and Canada making
herself a camp. When we talk over the war news, we call up ancient names: we
debate how Rome stands and what is the matter with Greece.
* * *
As
for Greece, I have ceased to talk of her. If I wanted to say anything about
Greece I should get down the Poetry Book and quote Lord Byron's fine old
ranting verse. "The mountains look on Marathon - and Marathon looks on the
sea." But "standing on the Persians' grave" Greece seems in the
same humour that made Lord Byron give her up as a hopelessly flabby country.
* * *
"'Tis
Greece, but living Greece no more" is as true as ever it was. That last
telegram of the Kaiser must have done its soothing work. You remember how it
ran: the Kaiser was too busy to make up new phrases. He telegraphed to his
sister the familiar Potsdam sentence: "Woe to those who dare to draw the
sword against me." I am sure that I have heard that before. And he added-delightful
and significant postscript! - "My compliments to Tino."
* * *
And
Tino-King Constantine of the Hellenes-understood. He is in bed now with a very
bad cold, and like to stay in bed until the weather be more settled. But before
going to bed he was able to tell a journalist that Greece was going quietly on
with her proper business; it was her mission to carry civilisation to the
world. Truly that was the mission of ancient Greece. What we get from Tino's
modern Greece is not civilisation but the little black currants for plum-cake.
* * *
But
Rome. Greece may be dead or in the currant trade. Rome is alive and immortal.
Do not talk to me about Signor Giolitti, who is quite sure that the only things
that matter in this new Italy, which is old Rome, are her commercial relations
with Germany. Rome of the legions, our ancient mistress and conqueror, is alive
to-day, and she cannot be for an ignoble peace. Here in my newspaper is the
speech of a poet spoken in Rome to a shouting crowd: I will cut out the column
and put it in the Poetry Book.
* * *
He
calls to the living and to the dead: "I saw the fire of Vesta, O Romans,
lit yesterday in the great steel works of Liguria, The fountain of Juturna, O
Romans, I saw its water run to temper armour, to chill the drills that hollow
out the bore of guns." This is poetry of the old Roman sort. I imagine
that scene in Rome: the latest poet of Rome calling upon the Romans in the name
of Vesta's holy fire, in the name of the springs at which the Great Twin Brethren
washed their horses. I still believe in the power and the ancient charm of
noble words. I do not think that Giolitti and the stockbrokers will keep old Rome
off the old roads where the legions went.
POSTSCRIPT
While this
volume was passing through the press, Mr. Ralph Shirley, the Editor of
"The Occult Review" callled my attention to an article that is
appearing in the August issue of his magazine, and was kind enough to let me
see the advance proof sheets.
The
article is called "The Angelic Leaders" It is written by Miss Phyllis
Campbell. I have read it with great care.
Miss
Campbell says that she was in France when the war broke out. She became a
nurse, and while she was nursing the wounded she was informed that an English
soldier wanted a "holy picture." She went to the man and found him to
be a Lancashire Fusilier. He said that he was a Wesleyan Methodist, and asked
"for a picture or medal (he didn't care which) of St. George.. because he
had seen him on a white horse, leading the British at Vitry-le-François, when
the Allies turned"
This
statement was corroborated by a wounded R.F.A. man who was present. He saw a
tall man with yellow hair, in golden armour, on a white horse, holding his
sword up, and his mouth open as if he was saying, "Come on, boys! I'll put
the kybosh on the devils" This figure was bareheaded-as appeared later
from the testimony of other soldiers-and the R.F.A. man and the Fusilier knew
that he was St. George, because he was exactly like the figure of St. George on
the sovereigns. "Hadn't they seen him with his sword on every 'quid' they'd
ever had?"
From
further evidence it seemed that while the English had seen the apparition of
St. George coming out of a "yellow mist" or "cloud of light,"
to the French had been vouchsafed visions of St. Michael the Archangel and Joan
of Arc. Miss Campbell says:-
"Everybody has seen them who has fought
through from Mons to Ypres; they all agree on them individually, and have no
doubt at all as to the final issue of their interference"
Such are the
main points of the article as it concerns the great legend of "The Angels
of Mons." I cannot say that the author has shaken my incredulity-firstly,
because the evidence is second-hand. Miss Campbell is perhaps acquainted with
"Pickwick" and I would remind her of that famous (and golden) ruling
of Stareleigh, J.: to the effect that you mustn't tell us what the soldier
said; it's not evidence. Miss Campbell has offended against this rule, and she
has not only told us what the soldier said, but she has omitted to give us the
soldier's name and address.
If
Miss Campbell proffered herself as a witness at the Old Bailey and said,
"John Doe is undoubtedly guilty. A soldier I met told me that he had seen
the prisoner put his hand into an old gentleman's pocket and take out a
purse"-well, she would find that the stout spirit of Mr. Justice
Stareleigh still survives in our judges.
The
soldier must be produced. Before that is done we are not technically aware that
he exists at all.
Then
there are one or two points in the article itself which puzzle me. The Fusilier
and the R.F.A. man had seen "St, George leading the British at
Vitry-le-François, when the Allies turned." Thus the time of the
apparition and the place of the apparition were firmly fixed in the two
soldiers' minds.
Yet
the very next paragraph in the article begins:-
"'Where was this?' I asked. But neither
of them could tell"
This
is an odd circumstance. They knew, and yet they did not know; or, rather, they
had forgotten a piece of information that they had themselves imparted a few
seconds before.
Another
point. The soldiers knew that the figure on the horse was St. George by his
exact likeness to the figure of the saint on the English sovereign.
This,
again, is odd. The apparition was of a bareheaded figure in golden armour. The
St. George of the coinage is naked, except for a short cape flying from the
shoulders, and a helmet. He is not bareheaded, and has no armour-save the piece
on his head. I do not quite see how the soldiers were so certain as to the
identity of the
apparition.
Lastly,
Miss Campbell declares that "everybody" who fought from Mons to Ypres
saw the apparitions. If that be so, it is again odd that Nobody has come
forward to testify at first hand to the most amazing event of his life. Many
men have been back on leave from the front, we have many wounded in hospital,
many soldiers have written letters home. And they have all combined, this great
host, to keep silence as to the most wonderful of occurrences, the most
inspiring assurance, the surest omen of victory.
It
may be so, but-
Arthur Machen.
