Observations placeholder
Shirley, Ralph - The Angel Warriors at Mons 08 – The evidence of Miss Callow
Identifier
027104
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
THE ANGEL WARRIORS AT MONS [continued]
A valuable addition to the list of records in connexion with the phenomena at :Mons was supplied by Miss Callow, secretary of the Higher Thought Centre, at South Kensington, to the Weekly Dispatch. She writes :
An officer has sent to one of the members of the Centre a detailed account of a vision that appeared to himself and others when fighting against fearful odds at Mons.
He plainly saw an apparition representing St. George the patron saint of England, the exact counterpart of a picture that hangs to-day in a London restaurant. So terrible was their plight at the time that the officer could not refrain from appealing to the vision to help them. Then, as if the enemy had also seen the apparition, the Germans abandoned their positions in precipitate terror. In other instances men had written about seeing Clouds of Celestial Horsemen hovering over the British lines.
Miss Callow also adds that a nurse at the front on one occasion asked her patients why they were so silent, to which the men replied, " We have had strange experiences, which we do not care to talk about. We have seen many of our mates killed, but they are fighting for us still."
Doubt has, not unnaturally, been cast upon the credibility of these records in England, owing to the publication of Mr. Machen's story and his persistent affirmation that this story was purely evolved from his own inner consciousness.
There appears, however, to be no question that at the time of his writing The Bowmen and for weeks before, these stories had been current, especially on the other side of the Channel, and if we are to accept the now generally admitted fact of telepathy, nothing is more likely than that a record passing from mouth to mouth might have reached Mr. Machen's subconscious intelligence and formed the basis of a story the main details of which, after all, only approximately corresponded to the experiences of the soldiers at the front.