THE "ANGELS OF MONS"

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 21, 25 January 1940, Page 12

THE "ANGELS OF MONS"

The "Angels of Mons," those "shining shapes which appeared as if protectively between the British and German lines" during the Retreat from Mons in -1914, and which are now reported from Finland, are today considered to have had their Origin in fiction. The most credible foundation ofMhe legend is generally thought to have been a short story by the wellknown author Arthur Machen;> This story, "The:. Bowmen-," was the-result of Mr. Macheh turning over in his mind the story of the retreat.: He was deeply moved by what he read about it, and saw it as "a furnace of torment and death and agony and terror." In the midst of this burning was the British Army, "consumed by the flames and yet aureoled by it, scattered like ashes and yet triumphant, martyred and forever glorious." In the following September he wrote "The Bowmen," a pure fantasy in which St. George arose to save-Eng-land in her hour of need and the soldiers in the trenches (so he wrote) saw a long line of , shapes, with "a shining about them," shapes like men, who drew the bow and sent clouds of arrows towards the Germans, who seemed to1 melt away. No wounds were - found on "the German dead.

The result, six months later, staggered him. Recalling what happened, a few years ago, he . confessed his amazement at the manner in which, the story spread, variations being made in it until the Bowmen became the Angels of Mons. Letters began to pour in upon him, newspapers and magazines printed discussions of the phenomena reported from the. battle front, sermons were preached upon the matter. "Stories got about that thousands upon thousands of Germans were found in Flanders pierced, through and through with arrows, but no one has yet come forward who ever saw the corpses," said Mr. Machen. "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."