1
When the Allied armies achieved the break-through at Saint Lo some few
years ago in that war we call Second, our armored columns fanned out
over the Brittany peninsula and thrust deep into the river valleys of
France. Most of us watched the drive for Paris, shook our heads over that
nasty business at Avranches, and breathed more freely when Paris fell.
From then on it was largely a matter of following, as closely as the
security blackout permitted, Patton’s progress toward the Rhine and the
star-shaped forts at Metz.
Few of us were then aware of the column under Hodges that began first to
probe, then to thrust northward into Belgium. At the time it was briefly
noted that our push to the Belgian border was even more rapid than the
German drive southward in 1940. And so our entry into and beyond Mons
passed almost unnoticed. Even the Germans were not too well aware of it,
apparently, for it was outside Mons, you will recall, that German tanks
were waved on by American MPs and obligingly clanked into bivouac areas
with the General Shermans and the half-tracks of the American First Army.
There were, if I remember correctly, and I am sure that I do, one or two
references to the Angel of Mons incident of the last war, but these were
merely notes in passing. The mere mention of Mons meant Machen to me, and
I suppose that, like many another Machenite, I waited with something like
bated breath for a sign of some sort, or a sequel to the legend that had
been born just thirty years ago that very month of September.
And, I suppose, devout Machenites the world over re-read in that
September of 1944, the invented tale of the wonderful Welshman, the
tale that was at first called simply, _The Bowmen_ and which came to be
called, by popular demand, _The Angels of Mons_.
It was one of the strangest stories of that first World War and a story
pure and simple it was. But it so captured and fired the imagination
of all Englishmen, and of the world, that people were unwilling for it
to remain merely a magical tale by a Welshman writing strange tales in
the city of London. People must have their miracles, and so Machen’s
invention of the Bowmen became one of the hallowed legends of the war.
You may remember the story, for you must have heard it, in one version or
another, even if you had never even heard of Arthur Machen.
_It was during the Retreat of the Eighty Thousand_, the tale begins.
The English were in danger of annihilation. At a particularly important
point in the line the German guns had thundered and shrieked all morning.
Finally, their numbers greatly reduced, the English saw a tremendous
host moving against them. German infantry—as far as the eye could see.
Well—the English fought on. One of the riflemen, who happened to know
Latin and other useless things, recalled a motto he had once seen in
a restaurant, _Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius_, which motto he said,
uttered or shouted. As he did so he felt “something between a shudder
and a shock” and behold! the roar of battle died down to a gentle murmur
and a great voice and a shout louder than the thunder cried, “Array,
Array, Array!” This was followed by other battlecries in English and in
French—cries to Saint George. And then he saw, “beyond the trench, a
long line of shapes, with a shining about them. They were like men who
drew the bow,” and their arrows flew toward the German host. Who, as it
happened, were stopped in their tracks.
Now this invention served its purpose, no less than any inspirational
tale or legend or truth or half-truth. But it became a matter of great
controversy because, as it happened, Arthur Machen, when questioned about
it, blithely revealed that there was not an ounce of truth in it. The
story was pure invention, a piece of fiction which was not, he added,
entirely to his satisfaction as a writer.
This discrediting of a miracle soon got abroad, and there was a great
hue and cry and indeed a notable hullabaloo about the matter. Machen was
taken to task ... the clergy thundered against him and many a pulpit
was pounded by many a pudgy ecclesiastical fist. Gentle ladies began to
produce “evidence” that the event had actually taken place—that they had
had it from a soldier who was there. A great many witnesses, once or
twice removed, were found and quoted. The controversy grew and with it
the legend.
As for Machen, he finally wrote a preface to a new American edition
to _The Bowmen_, now called _The Angels of Mons_, published by G. P.
Putnam’s Sons in 1915. In it he wrote:
“This was in last August, or to be more precise, in 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 made in 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 forever 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.” Well—that is the genesis of
_The Bowmen_ or, if you insist, _The Angels of Mons_.
It was murmured and hinted and suggested and whispered in all sorts
of quarters, Machen says, that before he wrote the tale he had “heard
something.” The most decorative of these whisperings was this: “I
know for a fact that the whole thing was given him in typescript by a
lady-in-waiting.” And, presumably, as is the custom with all popular
legends, most everyone had a cousin or a brother-in-law who had been
there. By the time the story had been reprinted in parish periodicals and
spread by word of pulpit, it began to seem to Machen that he had failed
in the art of letters. There began to be variations on the theme—such
as one in which the German dead were found to be punctured with arrow
wounds. The occultists next had a go at it, then the scientists began to
talk learnedly of “mass hallucination.”
The legend was then translated into several languages including, at any
rate, the French. The shining figure of St. George became, variously,
St. Michael the Archangel and St. Joan of Arc. The Germans, for security
reasons no doubt, offered no opinion or explanation of their abrupt
halt or of the tale. However, as Machen observes, “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 be 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 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 (1915)
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 nothing else, 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.”
Pamphlets were published, as is usual in such cases. The Theosophists
published an “answer to Mr. Arthur Machen.” Another worker in the
field collected “numerous Confirmations, Testimonies, Evidences of the
Wounded” and other materials in an “authentic record” of the event. The
furore died out after the war and the Angels of Mons rested in legend
with only sporadic appearances in the pages of the Sunday supplements.
Within a few years the legend had graduated to the sphere of science or
pseudo-scientific study.
2
In 1930 there was published in London a book called _The Mystery and
Lore of Apparitions, with Some Account of Ghosts, Spectres, Phantoms and
Boggerts in Early Times_ by Harold Shaylor, an investigator in various
fields of the marvelous.
The Frontispiece of this comfortably plump volume is “from a Drawing
by A. Forestier, reproduced by kind permission from the Illustrated
London News.” The sketch shows eight or nine soldiers in a trench in
the foreground firing at advancing hordes of Germans. To the right and
standing above the parapet of the trench are three gigantic bowmen,
helmeted and with swords at their sides, launching arrows (visible in the
sketch) at the Germans. A fourth bow and part of an arm are visible at
the extreme right. The Germans are falling in great numbers, at least one
is visibly pierced by an arrow.
Within the book, among the many marvels, we find this:
“Considerable discussion took place in the Press during the autumn of
1914 and the early part of 1915, with respect to the phenomena said to
have been seen at the Battle of Mons.
“The publications of these stories brought forth many others of a similar
character, the veracity of which appears to be unquestioned, and it will
be found interesting to compare them with some of the accounts of phantom
armies told in the preceding pages” (of Mr. Shaylor’s collection).
There follows then a story told by a non-commissioned officer who was
in the retreat from Mons on or about August 28th, 1914. The weather was
hot and clear and, between eight and nine in the evening, this officer
was with a group of others on guard duty. An officer came up and asked
if they had seen anything “startling.” Two men were sent forward to
see if they could discover what the officer meant. They returned with
nothing untoward to report. The officer then came back and, “taking me
and some others a few yards away, showed us the sky. I could see quite
plainly in mid-air,” says the non-commissioned officer, “a strange light
which seemed to be quite distinctly outlined and was not a reflection
of the moon, nor were there any clouds in the neighborhood. The light
became brighter and I could see quite distinctly three shapes, one in
the center having what looked like outspread wings, the other two were
not so large, but were quite plainly distinct from the center one. They
appeared to have a long, loose, hanging garment of a golden tint and they
were above the German line facing us. We stood watching them for about
three-quarters of an hour. All the men with me saw them, and other men
came up from groups who also told us they had seen the same thing. I
remember the day, because it was a day of terrible anxiety for us. Later
on the Uhlans attacked us and we drove them back with heavy losses.
It was after this engagement, when we were dog-tired, that the vision
appeared to us.”
Thus the story of the non-commissioned officer as told to Mr. Thompson.
Another account of spectral figures is recounted by a private of the
Lancashire Fusiliers. He is supposed to have given an account of his
experience to a Sister in a hospital. “It’s true, Sister, we all saw it.
First there was a sort of yellow mist like, sort of rising before the
Germans as they came to the top of the hill. Come on like a solid wall
they did. The next minute comes this funny cloud of light and when it
clears off, there’s a tall man with yellow hair in golden armour, on a
white horse, holding up his sword and his mouth open. The men knew it was
St. George. Hadn’t they seen him with his sword on every ‘quid’ they’d
ever seen?”
Thus the Lancashire Fusilier in Mr. Thompson’s 1930 account. Machen
encountered him just as the Putnam edition was on the presses in 1915.
In a Postscript to that edition of _The Bowmen_, Machen refers to an
article called _The Angelic Leaders_ written by a Miss Phyllis Campbell.
Miss Campbell relates that she was a nurse in France where there came
into her care a Lancashire Fusilier (the same one presumably, mentioned
by Thompson). He said he had seen St. George on a white horse, leading
the British at Vitry-le-Francaise, when the Allies turned. His story was
corroborated by a wounded R.F.A. man who was present. The R.F.A. man said
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, comments Machen, he was
saying, “Come on, boys! I’ll put the kybosh on the devils!”) This figure
was bareheaded 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?”
The difference between having a quid and seeing one may be significant.
At any rate, Machen makes a rather telling point concerning his
Lancashire Fusilier. The soldiers are said to have known it was St.
George by his exact likeness to the figure on the sovereign. This
strikes Machen as being odd because the apparition is described as being
bareheaded and in armour while the St. George on the sovereign or quid is
just the reverse, since he is quite naked except for a short cape flying
from the shoulders and a helmet. So—the evidence of the quid they’d
either had or seen scarcely presents sufficient identification of the
saint.
A final vision is presented in C. J. Thompson’s book—this one by a
soldier in an artillery battery in a letter dated June 26th, 1915. He
describes a being like an angel with outstretched wings surrounded by
a luminous cloud which appeared between the advancing Germans and the
British. The artillery man further states, “with regard to the stories
which you have heard about angels and spirits, they may be right but of
course you must remember that trench work is mind-straining as well as
nerve-racking and that may account for a lot of these stories.”
And indeed, Mr. Thompson ascribes most of these visitations, visions and
miracles to nerve strain or mass hallucination.
It will be noted that the legend had, by this time, divorced itself
completely from its creator. Mr. Thompson makes no mention of Arthur
Machen, either as the reporter or creator of this astonishing event. Nor
do Thompson’s _Acknowledgments_ or _Index_ contain any mention of Machen,
Arthur; or of his published works. Of course the tale of _The Bowmen_ was
first published in a newspaper, the London _Evening News_ for September
29, 1914, for which paper Machen was then a reporter. Mr. Machen may have
been included in Mr. Thompson’s inclusive word “Press.”
3
However, the curious turnings and twistings of legend are not yet
finished. The miracles of 1915 became the mass hallucinations of 1930,
and the creator of the slight story of _The Bowmen_ had been quite
forgotten in the furore attending each of them. But by far the most
curious circumstance in the whole curious affair is contained in the
most recent, to my knowledge, mention of the Mons legend. It occurs in
an article by Meyer Berger, entitled _Legends of the War_, published in
_Harper’s Bazaar_ in January, 1944.
Mr. Berger is an extremely competent correspondent for the _New York
Times_. As a matter of fact, it was out of respect for Mr. Berger’s worth
as a correspondent that I saved from salvage the magazine in which his
article appeared. Early in the spring of 1944 I was cleaning out the
winter’s accumulation of magazines and newspapers and readying them for
the next paper pick-up. The baroque _Bazaar_ is not, usually, to my
taste, but seeing Berger’s name over an article I placed the magazine to
one side and took it up to read some nights later.
The article concerns _legends_ of the war. Mr. Berger remarks, sensibly,
that war nurtures in the soldier some dormant sense that opens the door
to superstition, to mysticism, and to visions of the supernatural. He
then outlines the various legends of the White Lady on various fronts,
the Christ in Flanders legend and, of course, the Angel of Mons. Mr.
Berger uses the singular, and so one supposes, there is an Angel of Mons
legend as well.
Mr. Berger outlines the legend briefly, explaining that there was no
earthly reason for the Jerries to have stopped the pursuit, but stop they
did—and the wherefore of this astonishing halt forms the basis for the
story.
“Arthur Machen said later,” continues the Berger article, “that he
conceived the legend of the Angel of Mons as he daydreamed in church over
the news of the German’s miraculous halt.” This is not quite what Machen
said, of course. Machen explained that he conceived the story of the
Bowmen as he brooded in church over the news of the British _retreat_.
Berger goes on to relate that when Machen’s story appeared in the London
_Evening News_ as fiction it was, to his (Machen’s) astonishment, taken
up and spread all over the world as something that actually happened.
“There is no reason,” remarks Berger, “to question his explanation.”
On the other hand Berger spoke in France with Tommies who swore that,
Machen or no Machen, they saw the Angel at Mons, though not as he
described it in his piece. “The Machen story said that when the British
were hardest pressed at Mons, there appeared in the heavens, above
the battlefield, an unusual cloud formation. This changed into a giant
likeness of St. George, flanked by rows of medieval English bowmen whose
flights of arrows killed virtually all the German horde. When the bodies
were examined there was no sign of a wound.”
Whatever this may be, it is _not_ the Machen story. Machen has no cloud,
no giant St. George ... only “a long line of shapes with a shining about
them.” Mr. Berger also talked with a Sergeant Coombs of the King’s Royal
Rifles at an English base hospital in Trouville. Coombs swore he had seen
the Angel of Mons and Berger had reason to believe him, “if only because
he wore the Mons Star.” Coombs describes “a kind of triple cloud” ... a
large center cloud with two clouds at either side. They had no particular
shape at first but they gradually became a great angel ... “the two
smaller clouds were enormous wings, and the angel spread its wings as if
it were signalling the jerries to stop where they were.”
This seraphic semaphore is a refinement that had not previously
appeared in any of the many versions of the legend. One of the legend’s
variations, writes Berger, “has a faintly humorous side.” It appeared in
the _North American Review_ in August, 1915.
“It told of a soldier, hard-pressed with the rest at Mons and ready to
drop, who found himself murmuring, ‘Adest Anglis Sanctus Georgius.’ He
knew no Latin and he didn’t know what moved him to the utterance. Even
as it came to his lips, he recalled that he had seen it lettered on a
plate in a vegetarian restaurant in London, before he was called up
to service. It means, roughly, ‘May St. George be a present help to
England.’ Something like an electric shock convulsed the soldier and
his shock-packed ears dimly heard men around him shouting, ‘St. George
for Merrie England.’ From that point, the story followed the Machen
pattern—archers appeared in the sky and the Germans dropped by thousands.”
Now this version, with the “faintly humorous side,” which appeared
according to Mr. Berger in the _North American Review_ in August,
1915, _is_ the Machen story. Whether or not the North American Review
version was written by Machen I have been unable to discover. There
are differences, of course, even in the very condensed portion offered
by Berger. The _North American’s_ soldier knew no Latin ... he merely
recited, incorrectly at that, and at a very propitious moment, a motto
he had seen in a vegetarian restaurant. Machen’s soldier, although he
had apparently patronized that very same vegetarian restaurant, did know
Latin “and other useless things.”
And so the legend of the legend of the Angel or Angels of Mons continues
to grow out of Arthur Machen’s tale of _The Bowmen_.
4
In 1915, possibly because he was then writing _Far Off Things_ and was
in a mood reminiscent, Arthur Machen declared that he had failed in the
art of literature. Most good writers have felt, at one time or another,
a similar sense of failure—or at least of mild frustration. Presumably
they have a particular instance in mind, certainly Machen had his. It was
simply because his tale of the Bowmen had been accepted as truth.
Now it may seem to many a triumph of art that one’s work is held to be
so life-like and so real that it is generally accepted as the truth, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth. Our realists, for example, are
said to feel that way. They consider the verdict of veracity the highest
critical success. They have mirrored life and that, so help them, was
what they had set out to do!
Machen felt differently about it. His invention, his creation, was not
only accepted as being true, but his inventiveness and creativeness
were denied him. His magic had been judged mere journalism and that, to
Machen, or to any other creative artist, meant failure. However this may
be, Machen did not fail in his other legends of the war. Possibly because
he called some of them legends—perhaps because the public felt their
“willing suspension of disbelief” already supported too great a load—at
any rate Machen’s further inventions were permitted to remain inventions
and he was accorded a considerable, if not fanatical, amount of praise.
These other tales, _The Soldier’s Rest_, _The Monstrance_, _The Dazzling
Light_, had in them the very elements that should have appealed to those
who make legends of inventions. They offered much in the way of tradition
blended with mysticism, a mixture that should have drawn credence from a
much less tradition-loving people than the British. Perhaps there was too
much mysticism in these tales—anything less subtle than a warrior saint
might not appeal to the Church Militant.
But surely _Drake’s Drum_, or the tale called _Munitions of War_ had
the stuff of legend in them, and tradition too. Layed on, as a matter
of fact, with the trowel. _Drake’s Drum_ should have become one of the
glorious legends of the sea-girt Britons, the race of mariners. This is
the tale that relates the events that took place off Scapa Flow, when the
British Navy awaited the German High Fleet in November, 1918 to accept
their surrender. There were rumours that the Germans might possibly fight
and the crews of the British ships stood at “Battle Stations.” Then, as
the first German ship appeared through the mist, a drum began to beat in
the “Royal Oak.” And it beat and it rolled from then until the entire
German Fleet was encircled and helpless. Of course the unauthorized
drumming was investigated, but with all hands at Battle Stations, and
especially upon such a momentous occasion, it was hardly possible, and
highly improper, that there might be anyone aboard ship with the time and
the inclination to beat a drum. However, neither drum nor drummer were
located and there was no choice but to believe that what everyone had
been hearing was Drake’s Drum—“the audible manifestation of the spirit
of the Great Sea Captain, present at this hour of tremendous victory of
Britain on the Sea.”
Now this is certainly a tale that should have appealed to the Britons, as
indeed it did, but they refused to raise it to the status of a legend.
Then too, the story appeared in 1919, by which time England had less
urgent need of legends. In any case, the perfidious Teutons had by that
time scuttled their ships at Scapa Flow.
_Munitions of War_, a story published in 1915, also has the stuff of
legend, but somehow it never caught, never quite made the grade. Oh, it
was successful enough as a story, but it never became a legend. Which,
on the whole, pleased its creator. It tells of a traveller who went to a
seaport in the West of England and how he was awakened in the night to
hear vast oaths and burly voices heaving and ho-ing as they loaded ships.
The language used by these stevedores had an other-century quality and
the watcher in the night could only conclude that these men had loaded
Nelson’s ships before Trafalgar. Had this story been written in 1942
or 1943 instead of 1915 it might have been printed in the “Welders and
Steam-Fitters Gazette,” or some other house organ, and it may even have
been legendized by England’s defense workers and winners of the coveted
“E” award—or its British equivalent.
5
One of the longest, and by far the best, of Machen’s stories of the war
period is one that made no appeal whatever to the legend-loving instincts
of a people at war but which contained, as we may see in this post-war
year of ’48, something of the nature of prophecy.
_The Terror_ was first published in 1917. It was obviously inspired by
the reception accorded the tale of the Bowmen combined with more of
Machen’s creative magic. In the opening chapter Machen refers to the
rumours and legends current in the early years of the war—the Bowmen,
and the Russians who traveled through Britain by night on their way to
some great push or other. These absurdities, Machen points out, depended
upon the newspaper for their dissemination. The events described in _The
Terror_ had been held in strictest secrecy and no word had been given to
the Press. For reasons of security all events connected with the Terror
had been hushed up.
However, continued Machen, in a “now-it-can-be-told manner,” these were
the reasons why “almost two years of war had been completed before the
motionless English line began to stir.” The story of the Terror is, then,
purported to be the secret of the long inactivity of the British Army.
Things were happening all over England ... very strange things. An
airman had been killed under mysterious circumstances. The circumstances
appeared to have been obvious enough—he seemed to have been attacked by
a flock of birds, a rather mysterious matter in itself. There were other
happenings here and there, and rumors of many more. After a few strange
events had been reported in local papers there were no further accounts,
and sometimes there was no local paper thereafter. Few people would have
connected these events in any case. An airman is killed. A child chases
a butterfly and is seen alive no more. There are strange stories about
munitions works and fiery clouds and bees and horses and dogs. But none
of these may be written up in the papers.
Well, at long last and with Machen’s usual circumambience and magic the
story reveals that the mysterious deaths and strange events are being
caused by animals—by cows and sheep and dogs and horses and bees and
birds and moths. The explanation? Machen writes—
“... The source of the great revolt of the beasts is to be sought in a
much subtler region of inquiry. I believe that the subjects revolted
because the king abdicated. Man has dominated beasts throughout the ages,
the spiritual has reigned over the rational through the peculiar quality
and grace of spirituality that men possess, that makes a man to be that
which he is. And while he maintained this power and grace, I think it
is pretty clear that between him and the animals there was a certain
treaty and alliance. There was supremacy on the one hand, and submission
on the other.... ‘Spiritual’ signifies the royal prerogative of man,
differentiating him from the beast. For long ages he had been putting
off this royal robe ... he had declared, again and again, that he is not
spiritual, but rational, that is, the equal of the beasts over whom he
was once sovereign. He has vowed that he is not Orpheus but Caliban. But
the beasts ... perceived that the throne was vacant—not even friendship
was possible between them and the self-deposed monarch. If he were not
king he was a sham, an impostor, a thing to be destroyed.”
But before these mysteries are resolved there is much talk of German
spies, of mysterious rays, of all sorts of things that attempt to link
the chain of horrors with the Germans. And in the course of these
attempts to implicate the Germans in the Terror, Machen creates several
hypotheses which seemed the very stuff of fiction in 1917—but which in
our time must seem like prophecy.
It was in 1944 that the Viking Press issued a volume of its Portable
Library devoted to _Six Novels of the Supernatural_. Machen’s tale of
_The Terror_ was one of the six. Thus it happens that I re-read _The
Terror_ at about the time our forces were capturing the platforms
from which the robot bombs were launched at London. Now _The Terror_
has always pleased me as a tale, a diversion and, as with most of
Machen’s magic, something to think about when the world is quiet and
mysterious—say a midnight in October, or three o’clock of an August
afternoon. Nothing is inconceivable at such times, I think, and anything
can happen—or seem to happen. A long, long look at a tree or a hedge or
a hillside might give rise to disturbing thoughts—and one often finds
oneself looking hastily away before something actually _does_ happen.
But to return to _The Terror_. I had read it several times before and
I thought I knew it quite well. But reading it in 1944 it seemed quite
new. I had not remembered some things, perhaps because they seemed only
incidental to the plot. They were the sort of thing one skipped over
rapidly to see what would happen next, or when and where the Terror would
strike again.
Well along into the story a Mr. Merrit, one of Machen’s more talkative
characters, is explaining to a group of friends that “the Terror” is all
part of a German plot, that there are, indeed, Germans established in
England who are doing these things. And this, according to Merrit, is how
it was done:
“The scheme had been prepared years before, some thought soon after
the Franco-Prussian War. Moltke had seen that the invasion of England
presented very great difficulties. The matter was constantly in
discussion in the inner military and high political circles, and the
general trend of opinion in these quarters was that at the best, the
invasion of England would involve Germany in the gravest difficulties,
and leave France in a position of the _tertius gaudens_. This was the
state of affairs when a very high Prussian personage was approached by
the Swedish professor, Huvelius.”
Professor Huvelius, according to Merrit (or Machen) was an extraordinary
man. He was personally an amiable individual who gave every penny he
owned to the poor, who dissipated his salary on charity and kindness. He
starved himself in order to help the needy. And he wrote a book called
_De Facinore Humane_, which book proved the infinite corruption of the
human race.
The amiable Professor preached a cynical philosophy, the main tenets of
which have a familiar sound. He held that human misery was due, by and
large, to the mistaken notion that man was naturally well-disposed and
kindly. Murderers, thieves and other abominable creatures are created
by the false pretense and foolish credence of human virtue. And he goes
on to say that kings and the rulers of people could decrease the sum
of human misery to a vast extent by acting on the doctrine of human
wickedness.
“War,” says the mild Professor, “which is one of the worst of evils, will
always continue to exist. But a wise king will desire a brief rather than
a lengthy war, a short evil rather than a long evil. And this not from
the benignity of his heart towards his enemies, for we have seen that the
human heart is naturally malignant, but because he desires to conquer,
and to conquer easily, without a great expenditure of men or of treasure,
knowing that if he can accomplish this feat his people will love him and
his crown will be secure. So he will wage brief victorious wars, and not
only spare his own nation, but the nation of the enemy, since in a short
war the loss is less on both sides than in a long war. And so from evil
will come good.”
This philosophy sounds more and more familiar as Merrit goes on to
expound what he knows of the works of “Professor Huvelius.” The wise
ruler will assume that the enemy is infinitely corruptible and infinitely
stupid, since all men are so. The ruler then makes friends in the very
council of his enemy and among the people of his enemy, bribing the
wealthy and offering opportunity for still greater wealth, and winning
the poor by swelling words. “For,” says the Professor, “it is the wealthy
who are greedy of wealth, while the people can be gained by talking to
them of liberty, their unknown god.”
At any rate, this Huvelius sold his plan to the Germans. His philosophy
too, apparently, and presumably he donated the moneys thus obtained to
his favorite charity. The Germans accordingly proceeded to buy lands in
certain suitable places in England, secret excavations were made and in
a short time there was a subterranean Germany in the heart of England.
The Germans, having made themselves as secure as Crusoes, waited for “the
Day.”
This, then, was the plot outlined by Machen as he carefully prepared
the background for his story. It seemed not too incredible in 1915 as
he worked on the book, for there were rumors even then of emplacements
ready for guns discovered by British troops in Belgium and in France, and
certain caves along the Aisne seemed to have been made ready for cannon.
Now all this imagining in 1915 and 1917 comes pretty close to the events
of 1940. Whether the Germans had read Huvelius or Machen in the years of
the Long Armistice, or confined their reading to _Mein Kampf_, which
seems the more likely, they had certainly covered the ground from Eben
Emael to Quisling.
At any rate, _The Terror_ is first rate reading at any time, and
certainly a Machen “must.” It is too lengthy to be included in the usual
bibliography—but it is readily available in Viking’s “Six Novels of the
Supernatural.”
_Chapter Six_