The Angels of Mons | Page 3

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