Many people have read accounts of the visions said to have been seen by our soldiers in the early days of the war, and which have been called The Angels of Mons. The object of this pamphlet is to show their reality and to suggest the way in which they should be regarded.
In order to do this it is first, necessary ,to give an account of the principal testimonies concerning them, as collected by Mr. Ralph Shirley and Mr. Harold Begbie. ~ The first account is by Miss Phyllis Campbell,a cousin of Lady Archibald Campbell, and who has been a nurse at the front throughout the war. Speaking of “the awful days” of the retreat from Mons she said:
“I paid little attention to the stories at the time. The Commandant had warned us to be ready for evacuating
the base at a moment’s notice. But we hung on.
“Train after train crept into the forest without lights, almost without a sound. We went around with small lanterns, had to climb from the ground into cattle trucks, and then sort the living from the dead. This post was the first stopping-place.
“It was pitch dark, and I was attending a poor French fellow when the Lady President of the post called me.
Miss Campbell,’ she said, ‘there is an English soldier in the fifth wagon—he wants a holy picture."
The Angel warriors of Mons, by Ralph Shirley, published by The Newspaper Publicity Co., 61, Fleet Street, E.C., price id.; On the Side of the Angels, by Harold Begbie; Hodder & Stoughton, price 1s.
“It seemed an extraordinary thing to ask for in that awful scene, but I went to him. ‘Miss,’ he asked, ‘please give me a picture of St. George. I want a picture or a medal, because I have seen St. George on a white horse!
“An R.F.A. man lying near by corroborated this seeming madness. ‘It’s true, Sister,’ he interjected, we all saw it."
“While helping to make these men as comfortable as possible, I questioned them. Yes, they had seen it; others had seen it from different points of the battle. There was no doubt about it; St. George had saved them from utter annihilation.
“They had seen him come out of a funny-looking cloud of light. He was a tall man with yellow hair, in golden
armour, and was riding a white horse. He was holding a sword above his head. Then came the order to advance,
and the German hordes were in full flight.
“But why had they fled? None could say, for the British were hopelessly outnumbered.
"Later, during that awful night, I tended French soldiers who all brought, in effect, the same testimony. But some of these poor fellows said it was Joan of Arc, while others said it was St. Michael.
'When God sends St. Michael to fight for us,’ they said, then the case is hard indeed.’
“One French soldier—he was a sergeant-major, and has since been given an adjutancy — was particularly explicit and lucid in his account of the vision. He had seen Joan of Arc leading them on to victory. She was brandishing a sword and rode a white charger.
“On this night there were six of us women at the post, including Madame de A—, the President. Similar
stories were told to all of us, except one, who was mounting guard over some wounded Germans.
“When there came a lull in the work we compared notes. The accumulated evidence was from the lips of scores of wounded. Amongst these eye-witnesses were officers of high rank, a Roman Catholic priest, and
English and French soldiers.
“I had the testimony, amongst others, of three poor fellows of the Irish Guard. One of them was an enormous man who stood over 6 ft. 5 ins.
“St. George was in golden armour, bare-headed, and riding a white horse. He cried, ‘Come on!’ as he brandished his sword. This had occurred at the most critical point of the retreat.
“They had given themselves up for lost; nothing known to them could save them. ‘then suddenly there
had been this interposition from heaven, and to their amazement the Germans were in full retreat.
“The French testimony differed. Some said it was Joan of Arc, that she was bare-headed, riding a white horse
and flourishinga sword as she called ‘Advance!’ Others had seen St. Michael the Archangel, clad in golden
armour, bare-headed, riding a white horse, and crying Victory" as lie brandished his sword.
“These eye-witnesses came from widely-separated points of the field of battle. I cannot give names of places; not even could the officers do this. They had been retreating and fighting for days and nights. None
knew where they were.”
Miss Campbell said that her French colleagues at “The Place in the Forest” could supply corroborative testimony. She would see, she said, if she could get written statements to that effect.
In another account of the same facts, Miss Campbell says that “while bandaging a shattered arm the President
of the post, Madame de A— (presumably a Catholic), came and took her place, asking her to attend to an Englishman who was begging for a holy picture. The idea of an English soldier making such a request at such
a time seemed curious enough, but she hurried off to attend to his needs. He proved to be a Lancashire Fusilier.”
“He was propped up in a corner “ (says Miss Campbell), “his left arm tied up in a peasant woman’s headkerchief, and his head newly bandaged. He should have been in a state of collapse from loss of blood, for his tattered uniform was soaked and caked in blood, and his face paper-white under the dirt of conflict. He looked at me with bright, courageous eyes and asked for a picture or a medal (he did not care which) of St. George. I asked if he was a Catholic. ‘No,' he was a Wesleyan Methodist, and he wanted a picture or a medal of St. George, because he had seen him on a white horse, leading the British at Vitry-le-Francois,
when the Allies turned. There was an R.F.A.man, wounded in the leg, sitting beside him on the floor; he saw my amazement, and hastened in, ‘It’s true, Sister, we all saw it. First there was a sort of yellow mist, sort of risin’ before the Germans as they come on to the top of the hill, come on like a solid wall they did—springing out of the earth just solid—no end of ‘em. I just give up. No use fighting the whole German race, thinks I; it's all up with us. 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 his sword up,
and his mouth open as if he was saying, “Come on, boys! I’ll put the kybosh on the devils.” (This is my picnic expression.) Then, before you could say “knife,” the Germans had turned, and we were after them, fighting’ like ninety. We had a few scores to settle, Sister, and we fair settled them.’ “
In another account Miss Campbell writes “For forty-eight hours no food, no drink under a tropical
sun, choked with dust, harried by shell and marching, marching, marching, till even the pursuing Germans gave it up, and at Vitry-le-Freincois the Allies fell in their tracks and slept for three hours—horse, foot and guns—while the exhausted pursuers slept behind them.
“Then came the trumpet-call and each man sprang to his arms to find himself made anew. One man said, ‘I felt as if I had just come out of the sea after a swim. Fit, just grand. I never felt so fit in my life, and every man of us the same. The Germans were coming on just the same as ever, when suddenly the “Advance” sounded and I saw the luminous mist and the great man on the white horse, and I knew the Boches would never get to Paris, for God was fighting on our side.’”
Miss Campbell further states that the French wounded were in “a curiously exalted condition, a sort of rapture of happiness. It was quite true, they maintained, the Germans were in full retreat and the Allies were being led to victory by St. Michael and Joan of Arc. One of the wounded French soldiers happened to have come from Domremy, Joan of Arc’s native home, and declared he saw her brandishing her sword and crying, ‘Turn, turn, advance.’ No wonder, he said, the Boches fled down the hill.”
Miss Campbell also refers to the case of the three soldiers of the Irish Guards, who were mortally wounded and asked for the Sacrament before death, and before dying told the same story to the old Abbe who confessed them.
She also says that “immediately before the apparitions were seen all our wounded soldiers who were brought in expressed the conviction of swiftly approaching disaster, but that immediately afterwards there was a complete transformation of their attitude, the sense of despair giving place to a state of strange exaltation and confidence of victory.”
Another nurse, Miss Courtney Wilson, gives the following statement by a lance-corporal “I was with my battalion in the retreat from Mons on or about August 28th. The German cavalry were expected to make a charge and we were waiting to fire and scatter them so as to enable the French cavalry who were on our right to make a dash forward. However, the German aeroplanes discovered our position and we remained where we were.
“The weather was very hot and clear, and between eight or nine o’clock in the evening I was standing with a
party of nine other men on duty and some distance on either side were parties of ten on guard. Immediately
behind us, half of my battalion was on the edge of a wood resting. An officer suddenly came to us in a state of great anxiety and asked us if we had seen anything astonishing. He hurried away from my ten to the next party of ten. When he had got out of sight I, who was the noncommissioned officer in charge, ordered two men to go forward out of the way of the trees, in order to find out what the officer meant. The two men returned, reporting that they could see no sign of the Germans. At that time we thought that the officer must be expecting a surprise attack.
“Immediately afterwards the officer came back, and, taking me and some others a few yards away, showed us
the sky. I could see quite plainly in mid-air 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 neighbourhood. The light became brighter, and I could see quite distinctly three shapes, one in the centre having what looked like outspread wings; the other two were not so large, but were quite plainly distinct from the centre 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 other groups who told usthey had seen the same thing. I am not a believer in such things, but I have
not the slightest doubt that we really did see what I now tell you.
“I remember the day because it was a day of terrible anxiety for us. That morning the Munsters had a bad time;on our right, and so had the Scots Guards. We managed to get to the wood, and there we barricaded the roads, and remained in the formation I have told you. Later on theUhlans attacked us, and we drove them back with heavy loss. It was after this engagement, when we were dog-tired,
that the vision appeared to us.
“I shall never forget it as long as I live. I lie awake in bed and picture it all as I saw it on that night. Of my battalion there are now only five men alive besides myself ~ and I have no hopes of ever getting back to the front. I have a record of fifteen years’ good service, and I should be very sorry to make a fool of myself by telling a story merely to please anyone.”
Miss Wilson asked him if the figures resembled anybody, and he replied: “You could discern there were
faces, but you couldn’t see what they were like.” Miss Wilsoii also asked him, “What was the effect of
the vision on your feelings, and the feelings of the other men?”
“Well, it was very funny. We came over quiet and still. It took us that way. \Ve didn’t know what to make
of it. And there we all were looking up at those three figures, saying nothing, just wondering, when one of the chaps called, ‘God is with us' - and that kind of loosened us. Then when we were falling-in for the march the Captain said to us, ‘Well, men, we can cheer up now, we've got Someone with us.' And that's just how we felt. As I tell you, we marched thirty-two miles that night, and the Germans didn't fire rifle or cannon the whole way.” asked, “Did the effect — the moral effect—last?"
Asked, “Did the effect—the moral effect—last? He replied slowly: “There was a certain non-commissioned officer with us who was a fair coward, not fit to be a soldier, much less a non-commissioned officer, and
that man----well, he was a fair honest coward, and no mistake about it — he became quite different from that night. He didn’t mind what happened to him. He set a good example. That's a fact. He got killed at Wipers” (Ypres). Asked about other changes in the men. “We were a decent lot of men on the whole, amid of course fighting keeps a man quiet, but there was one very rough fellow along with us, always cursing and swearing and going for all the drink he could get — not exactly a bad fellow he wasn’t, but he was rough, very rough, and not particular about himself. Well, that man was changed right through by the vision. I think it had more effect on him than any of us. He didn’t speak about it, but we could see for ourselves It made a man of him.”
On being asked whether he had met, since he got back, any of the men who saw the vision, lie replied: “Only
one. He’s lying in Netley Hospital at this moment. He’s in the Scots Guards. I saw him the other day, and asked him about it. He remembers it just as well as I do. Of course, these chaps in here won’t believe it. They think I must have dreamed it. But the sergeant in the Scots Guards could tell them. It was no dreaming. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. I know very well what I saw.”
Miss Callow, Secretary to the Higher Thought Centre at South Kensington, also 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 today 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.”
Mr. Hazlehurst, a Justice of the Peace in Flintshire, wrote to the Daily Mail on August 22nd, 1915, concerning Private Cleaver, of the 1st Cheshire Regimnent. He said “Cleaver frequently spoke to his friends in the canteen of what he had seen at Mons, and finding he was only forty miles off I went to see him. He gave me the following words in writing: ‘I myself was at Mons, and saw the vision of angels.’ He also expressed his willingness to sign an affidavit to that effect. Well content, I returned home, and the following day procured an affidavit and again travelled forty miles to see him sign it. A copy is enclosed.”
The Rev. G. G. Monck, M.A., Prebendary of Wells and Rural Dean of Martock, quotes a letter he received from a friend concerning the angels at Mons, in which the following passage occurs: -
“The account I sent you was taken down from the lips of a wounded man in hospital in London by one of Sir H.'s sisters, who was working there. Curiously enough, about two months ago in Oxford I met a young lieutenant of the —— who had been all through the retreat from Mons,’ and had been wounded at Neuve Chapelle. I asked him if he knew the story. He replied: ‘I read it in hospital. It is simply miraculous, but it is perfectly true.’ He added: ‘Do you know that almost the same thing happened at Neuve Chapelle?"
The Rev. Alexander Boddy, Vicar of All Saints, Monkwearmouth, who was for two months at the front with the troops, also gives an account of similar visions having been seen at the second battle of Ypres, when the British were attacked by overwhelming numbers of Germans. He says: “A soldier of the 3rd Canadians stated that after the second battle of Ypres, when the battalion was retiring through their communication trenches towards their rest camp, they were obliged to halt where a West Ridingregiment was stationed. During the halt one of the men of this regiment was narrating to those around him a strange experience of his own. He had seen, he said, what at first appeared to be a ball of fire. Afterwards it took the form of an angel with outstretched wings, standing between the British front line and that of the enemy.” Mr. Boddy also mentions a story told to the sister of a gentleman
who had given up his house as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers. One of the wounded soldiers told
the lady that “at a critical moment an angel with’ outspread wings, like a luminous cloud, stood between the
advancing Germans and themselves. This figure appeared to render it impossible for the Germans to advance and annihilate them.” The lady in question was subsequently speaking of this incident in the presence of some officers, and expressed her own incredulity. One of the officers, a colonel, looked up at this, and said, “Young lady, the thing happened. You need not be incredulous. I saw it myself.”
Similar phenomena to those which have occurred in the present war were narrated of the siege of the British
Legation by the Boxers at Pekin. The occupants of the Legation found the house they occupied untenable, and
were obliged to move to another position, and while the removal took place the British were in full view of the Chinese insurgents, who, they took for granted, would fire upon them. To their great surprise they failed to do so. An Englishman who was present on the occasion, and who knew Chinese as well as his own native language, took the opportunity afterwards of asking one of the Chinese soldiers why they missed such a fine chance. The Chinaman gave as a reason the fact that “there were so many people in white between them and the British that they did not like to fire.”
In most of the records ofthe appearance the apparition of a luminous cloud is alluded to. One of these records narrates how “in this cloud there seemed to be bright objects moving. The moment it appeared the German onslaught received a check. The horses could be seen rearing and plunging, and ceased to advance.” A soldier of the Dublin Fusiliers is cited as confirming this phenomenon, adding, with regard to the cloud, that it quite hid them from the enemy. Numerous references have been made in the pulpits to these phenomena, some of the clergy going so far as to read letters from soldiers at the front to their congregations. Mr. Lancaster, for instance, a Weymouth clergyman, read one of these letters from a soldier who said that his regiment was pursued by a large number of German cavalry, from which they took refuge in a quarry, where the Germans found them and were on the point of shooting them. “At that moment,” said the writer, “the whole top edge of the quarry was lined by angels, who were seen by all the soldiers, and the Germans as well. The Germans suddenly stopped, turned round, and galloped away at top speed.”
Dr. Richardson, in a sermon on the Angels of Mons, asked whether there was anyone in the congregation who had seen letters from any soldiers who could tell of seeing angels on the battlefield. A lady, Mrs. Guest, of St. Leonard’s-on-Sea, immediately got up and said that she had seen letters from three different soldiers. In each one she said there was clear and convincing testimony that these soldiers had themselves seen the angels. The letters were not hysterical outbursts, but were written in a calm and sober fashion. These soldiers stated that the Germans
had been kept back by a troop of angels, and that the French soldiers also declared that they had seen the vision. Mrs. Guest was travelling from St. Leonard’s to London when a hospital nurse just back from France got into conversation with her. “She spoke to me,” said Mrs. Guest, “because I was wearing my son’s regimental badge. He is an Australian officer, recently wounded in the Dardanelles. The nurse showed moe three letters from different soldiers. All testified to having personally seen the angels, and that the French soldiers claimed to have seen St. Michael leading a troop of horsemen.”
“This intervention,” the soldiers said, “came at a most critical stage and certainly made the German horses
stampede.”
Some German prisoners vowed that the English had contrived to tamper with their horses beforehand. Other Germans said they fled because of large reinforcements which the English soldiers said was the phantom army.
Another lady who has established a rest-house and club for our soldiers in France, relates the following incident — “A dying soldier said to me, ‘It’s a funny thing, Sister, isn’t it, how the Germans say we had a lot of troops behind us?’ He went on to assure me that the German prisoners had said, ‘How could we break through your line when you had all those thousands of troops behind you?’ The soldier added, ‘Thousands of troops! Why, we were just a thin line of two regiments with nothing behind us.'
“A Sergeant-Major afterwards told me that he had heard a British officer talking to a German prisoner, and
that the prisoner talked of the crowd of troops behind the British line, saying that all the Germans had seen them.” The lady added, “I don’t believe in the angels, but I do believe—I can’t help believing—that our soldiers, many of them, are aware of something supernatural in this war. They talk about it among themselves, some of them ; and I suppose that they would talk as freely as they are able to others if those others showed sympathy. But I am positive they would even deny having seen anything at all if they were questioned by one who appeared to them sceptical and superior. Tommy is much more sensitive than people suppose.”
The following from A. M. B. in a letter to the Church Times, July 28th, 1915, is worth recording :—
".A lady in Germany at that time, who is well known for her work among English girls there, tells me that there was much discussion in Berlin because a certain regiment which had been told off to do a certain thing at a certain Battle failed to carry out their orders, and when censured declared that they did go forward, but found themselves absolutely powerless to proceed with their orders, and their horses turned sharply round and fled like the wind and nothing could stop them. The explanation given by the Germans was, ‘We simply could not go on; those devils of Englishmen were up to some devilry or other, and we could do nothing; we were powerless.’”
The same lady asked one, the lieutenant of the regiment, what really happened. He said, “I cannot tell you.
I only know that we were charging full on the British at a certain place and in a moment we were stopped. It was almost like going full speed and being suddenly pulled up on a precipice, but there was no precipice there, only our horses swerved round and we could do nothing.”
Mr. Ralph Shirley, referring to the visions seen by our men and the French, relates that he has interviewed two English ladies who have been nursing at a hospital at St. Germain en Laye, in the neighbourhood of Paris. These ladies stated that the accounts in question were in France “not merely implicitly believed, but were absolutely known to be true,” and they added “that no French paper would have made itself ridiculous by disputing the authenticity of what was vouched for by so many thousands of eye-witness.”
Similar visions were reported from Russia. Miss Campbell states that a Russian princess wrote to some of her friends in France stating that St. Michael had been seen during the battles in Russia. The letter arrived September 14th, 1914. The princess is a voluntary nurse, and her letter says that numbers of Russian wounded testified to seeing the visions. In a recent telegram also from Petrograd to La France de de;nazn it is stated that many Russian sentries declare that they have seen the ghost of General Skob~ioff(who gained fame in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877) in a white uniform, riding a white horse.
“Exchange,” Pall Mall Gazette,August 4th, 1915.
REMARKS ON THE VISIONS
The records of the phenomena witnessed by numerous British and French soldiers, including officers, do not
admit of any doubt as to their reality. The visions are not always the same. In one case a central figure is seen with a figure on each side, in other cases, a number of angelic forms are seen standing between our soldiers and the enemy at a critical moment. But the vision seen apparently by the greater number of both British and French soldiers was that of a warrior on a white horse, encouraging them to advance, and sometimes accompanied by other warriors. The various interpretations of the latter vision are just
what we might expect from the different poimits of view of the beholders. The British soldier believes he saw St. George of England, with which he was more or less familiar from pictures or coins. The French soldier believes he saw Michael the Archangel, or more generally Joan of Arc. The Russian soldier also sees St. Michael or else General Skobeloff. Each one clothes the vision in accordance with his preconceived ideas. These different interpretations of the vision are the best proof of its reality and that the same vision was seen by all. They are also wholly opposed to the suggestion that the phenomena were due to psychic hallucination induced by great mental and nervous strain; for in that case the different beholders, widely separated from each other, would have had greatly different hallucinations in accordance with the different idiosyncrasies of each.
The fact that the warrior on the white horse was sometimes accompanied by other warriors appearing in a
luminous cloud may explain the remark of some of the British wounded who said, “We have seen many of our
mates killed, but they are fighting for us still.” They doubtless alluded to the warriors who accompanied the rider on the white horse, and very naturally supposed they were their dead “mates.” It will be noticed that in one of
Miss Campbell's accounts she speaks of the vision as the angels of Mons, and as having taken place after certain days and nights of the continuous fighting and marching which followed the battle of Mons on August 23rd. But in other accounts Miss Campbell speaks of the vision as having been seen at Vitry Le Francois "when the Allies turned."
Now Vitry Le Francois is on the Marne, more than eighty miles to the south-east of the position held by the
British at the end of the four days’ battle which commenced at Mons on the 23rd. Vitry Le Francois was the
point at which
General Joifre ordered the retreat to stop and was followed by the counter attack of the Allies, which resulted in the complete defeat of the Germans and their being driven across the
Marne and back to the
Aisne with heavy losses.
Vitry Le Francois was not on the British front, but being the point where the retreat of the French was stopped and their attack commenced, it no doubt became among our soldiers, ignorant of localities, a general term for the point at which the Allies turned.
It seems clear that Miss Campbell’s accounts refer to two distinct occasions, on each of which there appeared the vision of the rider on the white horse, and that she has mixed the two incidents together. This might naturally be expected in the case of a young lady writing from memory after months of the stress and turmoil of war, and intent only on recording the facts connected with the vision itself, compared with which details of time and place would seem of secondary importance. It is in itself an evidence of the reality of the facts she relates, for in an artificially invented story particulars of time and place would have been given a prominent place.
There is a distinction to be observed in the accounts of the various visions. Where the British soldiers were hard pressed and in danger of being overwhelmed by the superior numbers of the enemy, the vision was generally of three or more angelic forms standing between them and the enemy, which had the effect of paralysing tile latter's advance. But when the British and the French were intended to attack, the vision was always that of a single warrior on a white horse, urging them to attack. This figure appears to have been seen not only previous to the Allies’ attack and defeat of the Germans behind the Marne, but also during the retreat from Mons.
The
battles of Le Cateau and
Landrecies, by which the British checked for the moment the German pursuit, were fought on August 25th and 26th, the retreat being continued through the night of the 26th. But on August 28th the Allies, having retreated behind the
Oise, turned upon their German pursuers, and the British cavalry inflicted two severe defeats on the pursuing German cavalry south of the Somme at Cerizv and near
St. Quentin, while at the same time the French turned and attacked the German guard corps and two other German corps, completely defeating them and driving them back on Guise. In fact, so completely were the Germans checked at this time that it is a question whether the Allies could not have held the
line of the Oise and Aisne instead of retreating to the Marne. It may be that it was at this time when the Allies turned on their pursuers that the vision of the rider on the white horse was seen.
On the other hand, it seems more probable that the vision may have occurred before the battle of Le Cateau,
when the British turned and held the greatly superior forces of the Germans at bay for the greater part of the day, August 26th. This is supported by the allusion of
Miss Campbell to the Forest, for a large portion of the British had just retreated from the position near the
fortress of Mauberge through the
Forest of Mormal.
But after the battle of La Cateau the weak British army was in great danger of being overwhelmed by the enormous forces of the Germans, three or four times their number, which had accumulated on their front and flank and threatened to envelop them. Yet it was just at this period that the German pursuit slackened, thereby enabling the British to retreat from Le Cateau with little or no molestation and reform their forces behind the Oise.
Sir John French in his report attributed this slackness of the German pursuit to the severe losses they had suffered at
Mons, Le Cateau, &c. But considering the German recklessness of loss, their great numerical superiority, and
their vindictive determination to crush the British, this is wholly insufficient to explain their sudden cessation of pursuit. May not the visions of the guardian angels. who stood between our troops and the pursuing Germans, as recorded by various witnesses, account for this?
In the account of the lance-corporal, recorded by
Miss Courtney Wilson, of the three angel forms seen by him and the men of his regimemt, he says that it occurred about August 28th. It might be expected that in the storm and stress of that period he would lose count of days, and that speaking of the event a year afterwards he could not be certain of the exact date. It is clear from his account that the vision occurred on the night of the 26th. From Sir John French’s report, the forced march of thirty-two miles of which the lance-corporal speaks, took place after the battles of Le Cateau and Landrecies, nor was there any other such march during the whole of the retreat to the Marne. Sir John, recognising the overwhelming forces of the Germans, determined to make this great effort in order to place the river Oise covering his front and left flank between him and the enemy. The retreat commenced by
Sir Horace Smith Dorien’s masterly~ withdrawal of his army corps from the position of Le Cateau. It commenced in the afternoon of August 26th, and had to be done gradually in the face of a greatly superior enemy, a most hazardous operation. The retreat was continued during the greater part of the night of the 26th and the whole of August 27th, and it was not until the 28th that the whole army was collected and reformed behind the Oise between Noyon on the left and the fortress of La Fere on the right, the whole distance by road from Le Cateau and Landrecies being fully forty-five miles.
It is also clear from the lance-corporal’s account that there had been heavy fighting on the day on which he
speaks, and that the Munsters and Scots Guards had suffered severely. Now, beyond the cavalry actions at St.
Quentin and Cerizy, and some rear-guard actions in the forest of Cornpeigne, south of the Aisne, there was no serious battle after the battles of Le Cateau and Landrecies. It was at the latter place that the Scots Guards suffered severely, the Guards’ division having to withstand the attack of a whole German corps nearly four times their number.
This shows that the time spoken of by the lance-corporal was the night of the 26th, after the battles of Le Cateau and Landrecies, when his battalion had retreated some miles and was halted under cover of a wood to keep the pursuing German cavalry at bay. The further retreat of thirty.two miles, commencing that night, with of course intervals of rest, was clearly that spoken of by Sir John French as continuing through the night of the 26th and the whole of August 27th.
The vision of the guardian angels, therefore, must have occurred at what was undoubtedly the most critical moment of tile war. For had the Germans pursued with their usual vigour, the British columns, separated from each other on a long line of retreat, would almost certainly have been attacked and overwhelmed in detail. As it was, the pursuit was feeble, and when the German cavalry did pursue they were attacked and defeated with heavy loss by inferior numbers of British cavalry.
Equally well authenticated records of similar visions of guardian angels were said to have been seen at the second battle of Ypres, where the Germans made their great attempt with vastly superior forces to break through our thinly-held lines, and in this case also the visions appear to have been guardian angels holding back the German onslaught. In every case this vision seems to have taken place at the critical moment when the British were in danger of being overwhelmed by greatly superior numbers.
We may here refer to the story of “ The Bowmen,” written by Mr. Machen. He claims that his story, invented
by himself, was the real origin of the various visions; that it suggested the idea to the British and French soldiers and caused them to imagine they saw these visions, or in other words, that they were hypnotised by his story.
But apart from the practical impossibility of Mr. Machen’s story having been read by soldiers who for days and nights had been marching and fighting with little or no time even for sleep, and the still greater unlikelihood of its having affected French soldiers, ignorant of English, there is the fact that the story was not published until September 29th, over a month after the time of the vision in the retreat from Mons and three weeks after the time when the Allies turned and attacked at Vitry-le-Francois. Mr. Machen’s story could not therefore have suggested the vision. Moreover, with one exception of doubtful authority, the accounts of the visions were not of bowmen but of angelic forms.
Mr. Machen, in short, admits that his invention was suggested by the stories which he had read in the papers
describing tile terrible days of the retreat from Mons. He says, in rather high-flown and exaggerated language :— “I seemed to see a furnace of torment and death and agony arid terror seven times heated, and in the midst of the burning was the British army. In the midst of the flames consumed by it amid yet aureoled by it, scattered like ashes and vet triumphant, martyred and for ever glorious; so I saw these 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 while the deacon was singing tile gospel.”
Considering that there were no correspondents at the front and that no details of tile retreat from Mons were known for some days afterwards, it is quite possible that during that time some rumours of the vision had reached England and that a vague but forgotten mention of it had reached Mr. Machen, and unconsciously to himself had suggested his story—that, in short, the visions had suggested the story and not the story the vision.
It has also been pointed out by Mr. Harold Begbie that there is such a thing as telepathy or the transference of thought from one person to another without words, a fact ‘which has been proven beyond dispute by numberless well authenticated instances. Tne telepathy between animals is often most wonderful, and there are many people who have had experience of it, generally of trivial importance, in everyday life between themselves and others with whom they had strong sympathies. It is therefore not impossible that Mr. Machen’s mind, being wrought up to a high pitch of sympathy with our men in their retreat from Mons, may
have had, unconsciously to himself, some telepathic communication of the vision seen by them.
* Mr. Machen is an extrem ritualist, and it is stated that he is about to join the
Church Rome — The Cayjo;ic Herold,Sept., 1915 National Protestant Federation, Sept., 1911, p. 15.
But Mr. Maclien was probably fully aware of the numerous traditions of supernatural appearances on the eve of great conflicts or at critical moments and this, in itself would be quite sufficient to suggest his story, which it must be remembered differed considerably from the actual visions.
Mr. Machen, however, is anxious to be thought the sole originator of the visions and to prove that they were
merely hallucimiations, the product of his suggestion. He therefore endeavours to throw discredit on their reality, and among other objections to them, he says that if these visions were seen by so many men how is it that none have come forward to testify of them.
But of the men who fought in the first battles of the war a large proportion are killed or prisoners, and probably not more than one-third now remain. Of these the majority are still fighting at the front, and their testimony is not available in England. The only testimony available is that of those among them who have been wounded and are still in hospital or incapable of further service, and these are necessarily very few.
It is not true that none of these have not testified to the reality of the visions, for many on being questioned have done so. But, as we have seen, they are loth to speak about them. The effect of the visions on them was to make them silent. They did not like to talk about them. They did not understand them, and there is nothing the British soldier shrinks from more than to be thought weakly credulous and foolish. Rather than be thought this by anyone affecting a sceptical superiority, he would deny the vision altogether. There is little or nothing of this reticence among the French soldiers, who are only too willing to relate their experiences, and as the testimony of most of them is available on the spot, the reality of the visions is not even questioned in France. Mr. Machen also, in support of his contention that the visions were a psychological illusion, compares them to the fact that many people in England were led to believe that they had seen large numbers of Russian soldiers passing in trains from the North for embarkation to France, although no such soldiers existed. But this was not an illusion of the senses. The people who testified to the fact really saw what they believed to be Russian soldiers, and it seems that they were intended to do so. The mystery attending the transit of these soldiers in railway carriages with the blinds drawn down helped to confirm this belief, and it is stated on good authority that it was a ruse of Lord Kitchener’s to create the belief that a powerful Russian force was about to be landed on the West Coast of France, in order to attack in flank the line of the German advance on Paris. It seems that the Germans also feared this, and it therefore was very possible that the Russian story had no little effect in inducing them to turn aside from Paris.
It is difficult to quite understand Mr. Machen’s anxiety to prove that the visions were merely hallucinations suggested by his story of “The Bowman.”
How, then, are we to regard the visions the reality of which cannot be denied, and what did they portend?
It is clear that we are living at the time foretold in
Luke 21: 10, when “nation is to rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” For unlike former wars, when the fighting was confined to the regular armies of the States of War, this is a war of nations against nations, waged by the whole peoples of the nations engaged. It is in connection with these wars of the last days that "fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven." It would therefore be a serious error to reject the possibility of their taking place at the present time, or to receive with incredulity the strong evidence of their occurrence, as in the case of the visions of Mons and Ypres, lest in so doing we should reject the testimony of God vouchsafed for our benefit and encouragement.
It must further be remembered that the forces arrayed against us in this war, viz., Ultramontane Rome and
Germany, are wholly evil and opposed to God, and that their purpose in making this war has been to crush Britain as the stronghold of Protestantism, and the chief witness of God in the world, and the chief propagator of the Bible throughout the world. Moreover, we are fighting against foes who are not only opposed to God and the truth of God but whose methods of warfare, treachery, falsehood and ruthless cruelty are wholly Satanic.
The war must therefore be regarded as the beginning or foreshadow of the final great conflict which is to take place at the close of this dispensation between Satan and Christ — the “battle (or war, polemon) of that great day of God Almighty” (
Rev. 14. 4). See also
Rev. 17. 14.
In all wars between the people of God and the enemies of God, the former, as shown by the history of Israel,
whenever they are true to God, were miraculously helped by God. The battle was not merely on earth but in
heaven — as in the case of the defeat of
Sisera —" they fought from heaven. The stars in their courses fought
against Sisera” (
Judges 5. 20). So also in the overthrow of Paganism by Christianity in the reign of
Constantine the Great, the conflict, although decided on earth, is represented as taking place also in heaven between Michael and his angels and Satan and his angels (
Rev. 9).
Again, in
Dan. 10 we see the veil lifted which conceals the heavenly combatants in earthly conflicts. The
description of the man clothed in white who appeared to Daniel and in whose presence Daniel’s strength was turned to corruption, shows Him to be Christ, who appeared to
John in Patmos, and before whom the apostle fell as dead (
Rev. 1. 13 -15 ). The description in both cases is practically identical.*
He tells Daniel : “The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days : but, lo, Michael, one of tile chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia . . . and now will I return to fight with [i.e., on the side of the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come “ (
Dan. 10: 13 - 20).
The words appear to refer to the raising up the power of the Persians for the overthrow of the Babylonian empire and to the establishment of the Persian empire as long as Christ remained with them; but that when He had “gone forth,” or left them, the Greeks would come, by whom, under
Alexander the Great, the Persian empire was in its turn overthrown.
It shows that behind the conflicts of earthly kingdoms there are unseen heavenly powers by whom the issues of these conflicts are decided.
We may also refer to the story of Elisha (
2 Kings)
Vi. 13—17), when the king of Syria sent an army to capture the town in which he lived, where we are shown that he was really defended by the invisible hosts of heaven. For “the angel of the Lord encamnpeth round about them that fear Him and delivereth them” (
Psalm 34:7).
*It will be noted that in other visions the appearance of angels only do not produce the overwhelming physical effect as in the two cases mentioned above.
If, then, the present war is the beginning of the final great conflict between Christ and Satan, we may believe that Christ and the armies of heaven are, unseen, fighting on our side. But in all such conflicts the people of God have to suffer failures, reverses, arid defeats before they finally overcome. It is part of their discipline and teaching either as chastisement for national sin, or in order that they may recognise the power and malignity of the enemy and their own dependence on God. In the same way the individual Christian has to suffer chastisement, failure, defeat, and overthrow in order that he may recognise the power of the evil he has to overcome, and be made humble and poor in spirit, and recognise more fully his dependence on Christ, whose strength is made perfect in his weakness. It is at such times, whether in the case of the individual or the nation, that faith and hope are liable to waver and fail. If, then, in the time of His great temptation an angel was sent to strengthen Christ Himself, there is nothing
improbable that in times of overwhelming danger and need the eyes of some, like those of the servant of Elisha, should be opened and enabled to perceive the heavenly forces arrayed on their side, thereby filling them, as in the case of the soldiers in the retreat from Mons, with a strange confidence and exaltation of spirit. Nor would such vision be intended for them alone, but for all believers in Christ who in the dark hours of the war, and the still darker hours which the nation may yet have to pass through, might be tempted to despair.
Now the final battle of the great war between Christ and Satan is described in Rev. 19., where it is shown that Christ, followed by the armies of heaven, will appear on earth for the salvation of His people and the destruction of His enemies ~ Christ is there revealed as a rider on a white horse, Who “in righteousness doth judge and make war.” We may, therefore, conclude that any previous manifestation of Him as an earnest of His presence for the purpose of strengthening and encouraging those who are fighting on His side would take that form.
Finally, it may be shown that in the great conflicts of the last days between Christ amid Satan time chief earthly protagonist on the side of God is to be the British nation, who are to be specially raised up by God for this purpose. This has already been partially fulfilled in the present war.
Therefore, as many great signs from heaven are to appear during the final conflicts, it seems highly probable that they will come as special revelations to the British for their encouragement in the hour of their need, and should be received as assurances of the help of God in the dark hours which may yet await the British race.
FALSE SIGNS AND LYING WONDERS
We are told that in these last days false Christs and false prophets are to appear, who shall show great signs amid wonders, and deceive if possible the very elect (
Matt. 24. 24). But Scripture tells us how we are to regard such signs and wonders. If their effect is to support idolatry or false religion, we are to give no heed to them. They are permitted by God as tests to prove the reality or otherwise of people’s faith (
Deut. 13. 1 - 3). But the case of the rider on the white horse in the vision of Mons is not of this character. If, as pointed out, the vision can only be a manifestation of Christ as an earnest that He is fighting, unseen, on our side, it must lead to faith in Him and not to idolatry. It would not only induce numbers to seek His aid in the hour of earthly need and conflict, but beget in many, hitherto ignorant of Him, the desire to know more of Him, and thence to seek His aid in spiritual things as "the only name under heaven given among men by which we can be saved,” and Who has said “Him that cometh unto Me I wiIl by no means cast out and I will raise him up at the last day “ (
John 6: 37 - 40).
But whatever evidence of truth is given by God to man, Satan will do his best to pervert it, or else neutralise its effect by sowing tares among the wheat so as to make it difficult for the world generally to distinguish between truth and error. The teaching of Romanism is wholly opposed to any direct appeal to or trust in Christ Himself. The sinner is warned that if he goes to Christ direct he will be rejected, and that he must first seek the mediation of the Virgin as "the only hope of sinners." As the Jesuits told the
Rev. Hobart Seymour, the religion of Rome is practically the worship of Mary ; that is,
Mariolatry.*; We may therefore expect that the advocates and supporters of Romanism would endeavour as far as possible to either pervert, or wholly deny, visions such as those of Mons and Ypres, which, if believed, might lead numbers to put their trust in Christ.
Evenings with the Romanists, p. 239.
Such is probably the explanation of the supposed appearance of the Virgin Mary with Christ in her arms to the Russian soldiers before the battle of Angustovo. Nothing would be more likely than that the priests or devotees of superstition would make use of the actual vision in order to support their false religion by persuading the ignorant soldiers that what they saw, more or less indistinctly in a luminous cloud, was a vision of “the Virgin and Child,” which is the usual way in which the false Christ of both
Paganism and Romanism is represented.
The above is not the only case in which these visions have been Perverted by fables and inventions to teach idolatry and false religion. Such accretions and fables must be
expected, and will doubtless deceive those who are not
guided by the “Spirit of Truth” (
1 John 2: 20 - 27).
