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.