IMMORTAL WARRIORS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 211, 4 September 1915, Page 13

IMMORTAL WARRIORS.

IS JEX.LXCOE ADMIRAL DRAKE! KING ALBERT AND WILLIAM THE SILENT. "Nelson —was FrancJs Drake! O, what matters the uniform, Or the patch on your eye or your plnnedup sleeve, If your soul's like a North Sea storm? —"The Admiral's Ghost" <Newbolt). In the first Balkan war (1912) many Serbian soldiers claimed to hare seen Marko (a noted champion of the Serbs against the Turks, who has become the most famous figure in Serbian legend) on his grey charger waving them on to victory. Nothing could shake them in this .belief. This and other facts led Mies Lilian Edwards, a Theosophist, to ask: "Is it possible that we have more than one life on earth?" She writes as follows in the "Weekly Dispatch":— We find boys to-day, with no military ancestry behind them, who , are eagerly giving up everything to go and eerve their country, and, what is a curious fact, many are boye who know what it feels like to be under fire, and will tell old campaigners exactly how it feels. Devonshire sea-folk if questioned will say that Admiral Sir John Jellicoe has been on earth before, not once but many times, for they believe that 'he is none other than the famous Elizabethan admiral Drake come back to fight for his Country, _ - r --' ~~ J

Talking to an old fisherman, eighty years of age, on the sea walls of Brix'ham, Mr. Arthur Applin referred to the legend how Drake, when dying, told his men to take his drum and to hang it upon the sea wall, and if ever England was in danger and called, the sailors were to strike, upon the drum and he would come and help her. "Tou must take my drum," he says, "To the old sea wall at borne, And If ever you etrike that drum," lie cays, "Why, strike mc blind, I'll come:" The sailor's face grew grave as he listened. He was silent for a long time, and then whicjpered at last. ''The drum was heat, Drake's drum was heered to beat a while back; our lads heered 'cr one night as they was puttin' out from Plymouth Sound." He nodded his head as he took off his cap, ''but I knowed long back, when I stood afore Jack Jellicoe, close as I be standiu' to you, sir. I caught his eye, and I knowed it wor Drake coom hack. Yes, eir, the old drum beat, and he coom back as he said he wouid." Perhaps, then, the old legend that Drake's drum was heard to beat one stormy night a hundred years ago, and that Drake, as Nelson, came to England's aid may also be true. This idea of rebirth Is coming very much to the fore to-day, and is springing from the intuition of the people themselves. There are many Belgians to-day who identify King Albert with WDliam the Silent, who, as Prince of Orange, permanently crippled the tyrannical power of Spain and founded the independence and greatness of the United Provinces. It is an interesting fact that many old prints of William bear a remarkable resemblance to Belgium* present