ANGELS OF MONS

Hokitika Guardian, 29 October 1932, Page 2

ANGELS OF MONS

BEAUTIFUL MYTH’S ORIGIN. ENGLAND’S GHOSTLY BOWMEN. The Angels of Mous. . . Even today mention of the heavenly host, whose flaming swords held back the grey armies of Germany, brings a hush upon any assembly of men, says Mr 11. K. Macaulay in an article in the “Sunday Graphic.” Even to-day there are thousands who believe in the angels, which, it is said, saved the British Army from utter annihilation in that retreat, as 'sincerely as they believe the miracles of Judea. The story, doubtless, will go down •in the history of the British people as long as any records i tfh^he;Greiit War remain. But, it' 'is'’a |)eautiful and wonderful myth.” Mr Mii&fuiii.v says he has met the man who ! giivti 'it birth. The , nation acknowledged, recently, a measure of its debt to that mail for liis contribution to literature by granting him, a civil pension of £IOO a year. He is Arthur Machen, for over 30 years a London journalist, and in his quiet cottage in old Amersham he told the story. The story began on that dreadful Sunday in August, 1914, when the newspapers were full of the terrible details of the Mons retreat, following the battle in which 5000 British soldiers lost their lives. It is significant to remember that tho German losses were more than double.

Story of the “Angels.” Mr Machen told the narrative as follows: “All that morning- in church I could not forget the details, of that retreat. .1 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 1 saw our men with a shining about them. , ; , “In the following September I wrote a<short story called -“The Bowmen.” It was pure fantasy, a story in which St. George rose to save England on the field of battle in her hour of need. “The soldiers in the trenches saw before them—so I wrote —a long line of shapes with a shining about them. They were like men who drew the bow, and their cloud of arrows went singing and tingling through the air toward the German hosts which melted away. No wounds were afterward found on the bodies of the German dead, “I did not consider that “The Bowmen” was by any means the best thing. I had over written. In fact, I didn’t think much of it as a piece of craftsmanship at all. Imagine my complete amazement, therefore, six months later when the first whisperings began to got about that the story was authentio history. “The clergy began to preach sermons about the story in the churches, the newspapers and magazines took it up with 'avidity, and gradually different variations began to creep in until the bowmen of England became the Angels of Mons. Hundreds of letters came pouring in to me. I was herd put to i,t explaining emphatically that |the original story was pure, undiluted fiction. Nobody believed me. They said it must be true.

A Great Moral Effect. “The fact of the matter is, I suppose, that people wanted the story to be true. The horrors of war, the long casualty lists, the grief-stricken homes, made people turn somewhere for comfort. “We are in the right over this Var,” they said to themselves. “We are on the side of the angels. Heaven defend us in our hour of peril,” “One cannot deny the tremendous moral effect the story of the Angels of Mons had upon the nation. It went all round the world and was echoed in every country. It gavo the mothers and the sweethearts and the wives great solace to think that their men were protected by supernatural guidance on the fields of death. If it brought comfort to them I am glad, but no one has over yet come forward to say at first hand they ever saw an angel at Mons. “Stories got about that thousands upon thousands of Germans were found dead in Flanders, pierced through and throug'h with arrows, but no one has yet come forward who ever saw the corpses. All I could ever make of it was that someone (unknown) met a nurse (unnamed) who attended a soldier (anonymous) who had seen the angels. That is not evidence. “There is just this,” concluded Mr Machen quietly: “If a miracle on the shores of Galilee is credible, I do not say that a, miracle on the baitlefields of Flanders cannot be credible, too.”