War and the Weird

War and the Weird

[11] "Do you think there is anything in it?" He was a clean-set six-foot specimen of English manhood, an officer of the R.F.A. wounded at Mons, who spoke. "I mean I haven't studied these subjects muchin fact, I haven't studied them at all. Sport is more in my line than spiritualism and that kind of thing, but when you have experiences brought under your very nose again and again, you cannot help thinking there must be something in such things." He had just told me that in the last few minutes' sleep he managed to get on the march to Mons he dreamt that he was unable to sit his horse. The next day he was wounded inside his right knee, not seriously, but sufficient to stop him riding for a week or two. "I should never have thought anything more of itI mean, connecting the dream with the ill-luckbut in the South African campaign there were quite remarkable instances. You see, at such times when you are playing hide-and-seek[12] with shrapnel, officers and men get very chummy when we do get a spell for a talk. The Tommies give us their confidences, and ask us all kinds of strange questions about religious and super-natural things." Take premonitions, for example. How shall we account for the British soldier's actual versions of the matter? There are countless stories in this war, in every war, of men having a warning, a sub-conscious certainty of death. The battlefield is armed with a full battery of shot, which thrill with human interest and have around them a halo of something uncanny, supernormal. It may be that in the stress and shock of battle the stringssome of the stringsof the human instrument get broken; that poor Tommy, gazing into the night of the long silence, becomes a prey to morbid fancies, which presently are worked up into premonitions. There may be something in this, but the men of inaction are more prone to fancies than men on active service. Another theory suggests that the same power within which questions, supplies an answer. It may be so; but no one is anxious for the answer Death brings. One can only smile at the crass stupidity of most of the explanations given by those who deny the existence of super-natural agencies and powers. The region of spiritual dynamics is destined to be the science of the future. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 25037
Author: Hopkins, R. Thurston (Robert Thurston)
Release Date: Apr 10, 2008
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Phillips, Forbes, 1866-1917