SIR CONAN DOYLE

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 138, 7 December 1929, Page 21

SIR CONAN DOYLE

SPIRITUALISM IN AFRICA

Sir Conan Doyle, as is well known, is an ardent Spiritualist. He has been in Africa on a missionary journey, as he describes it. In "Our African Winter" (London: John Murray) he describes a seance held at Cape Town, and which was regarded as satisfactory. Miss Zena Dare, who was present, was believed to have had a message from Ellen Terry. At another nieet'ug a "Mrs. Butters, who could speak no Italian', suddenly burst out singig "Jtascia chio pianga" in a fine I baritone voice. At the conclusion' she awoke suffering from pain in her larynx. At the grave of Cecil Rhodes, Lady Doyle wrote down a psychic communication, in which the founder of Rhodesia was credited with saying that he and Dr. Jameson were working together "over here.. Wo want to purify this glorious country from the dross and mirk and growth of human fungus which, has arisen from the bowels of the earth." Sir Conan Doylo has the highest opinion" of Rhodesia, which he believes will prove in a hundred years' time "the very finest Dominion that fliesthe British flag," with infinite resources in gold, copper, tobacco, and coal. The political atmosphere he describes as • "British and patriotic to an almost incredible extent." But ho was depressed to find a practically universal lay opinion that tho missions of every sort have done more harm than good, and that heathen natives are regarded as on:a higher plane of morality than native Christians. Divisions by which Christianity itself is convulsed, and attempts to teach dogma instead of simple ethics,-are, he holds, the cause of this difference.