THE ANGELS OF MONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20508, 8 March 1930, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE ANGELS OF MONS.

GREAT WAR MYSTERY.

OPINIONS. OF TWO SCIENTISTS,

SELF-HYPNOTISM THEORY

HALLUCINATION. OF SOLDIERS.

For the first time since the story of the Angels of Mons xvas first told, a satisfactory theory has been put forward in explanation of the most amazing happening of the Great War, says a writer in the Sunday Chronicle. Two scientists who have thoroughly investigated tli9 whole matter stato that they are convinced that British soldiers driven back from Mons on August 24, 1914, actually saw angels marching across the sky, but that tho visions were hallucinations,'' examples of how tho human mind can hypnotise itself into Seeing, with every appearance of reality, things which do not exist.. Few incidents of the Great War gave rise to - so much controversy. Out of a welter of conflicting evidence, one or two facts stand out clearly. One is that hundreds of. British soldiers believed implicitly that at the worst moment in the terrible, days of Mons they saw a vision of a'ngeis marching majestically across the sky, and another is that French troops are convinced that at precisely the same moment St. Michael and Joan of Arc ap* peared to them. «' We All Saw It." Among tho evidence given, before imagination and the exaggeration of twicetold tale had embroidered the story, was that of Miss Phyllis Campbell, an Australian nurse, who talked soon after the event with wounded soldiers who declared that tlioy saw the Angels of Mons. Miss Campbell? writing not long after her experience, described how she tended the wounded * troops and how they told her of their vision. One night a badly- wounded Tommy sent for Miss Campbell. She went to him, and his first words were: "Miss, please give me a picture/..0f St. George. I want a picture or a medal-because I have seen St. George , on a white horse." A Royal Field Artillery man lying near • by corroborated this; "It's true, sister," ho said, V we all saw it." Miss Campbell then questioned many other men, and they all told the same story. At a most critical moment of the battle, according to them, St. George and a host of angels had appeared and had saved them all from utter annihilation. Miss . Campbell's story, in her own words, is as follows:—"They had seen St. George come out of a funny-looking cloud of light. He was a tall man with yellow .hair, in golden armour, and was riding a white horse. He was holding a sword'. above his -head. Then cam© the order to advance, and the German hordes were, in full: flight. But why they fled none cptiild 'say, for the British were hopelessly out-numbered." A Possible Explanation. Later Miss Campbell talked with the six other women who had been at the same post. Similar stories-had/been. told.-| to all of them, and the accumulated evi- • dence was from the "lips 'of scores of wounded. , Some of the soldiers said that "tnediseval-bewmen whostood between the outnumbered British troops and th&- oncoming Germans. The whole matter of the Angels of Mons has been, probed and thrashed out by societies interested in occult manifestations and phenomena:' Until the present time,;however; no satisfactory explanation of the strange story has been forthcoming. But Dr. G. B. Cutten, president of Col-*-'gdts University, United States, and Dr. 3?. -'-C. '-S./ Schiller, of Oxford, by their, 'investigations, claim to have succeeded 'in throwing light on the mysterious hap- - pening,, and their explanation, it seems certain, will be the accepted one. - Dr. Cutten, who is a life-long student of i obscure: -phenomena of the mind, adopted ?.t the outset of his inquiries the point of/<view that the soldiers, both British and French, actually did see the j -angels, the bowmen, and the sajnts. From his vast experience of cases of a similar Mature Ke evolved the auto-fiypotism .theory, and then proceeded to collect evidence which strengthend the case. Power of Hypnotism. ' To the soldiers, Dr. Cutten states, the , Visions. were very real. The objects seen would seem to them as solid and certain •as the sight of rifle, a machine-gun, or . the'camp-kitchen. But that, according to the 'two; • scientists, is just what characterises these hypnotic and self-hypnotic illusions there are. so many parallel exariiples that it is now clear that hallucin-ation-is'the only basis which the famous story possesses. Hypnotism, although to the man in the street it seems to be a sort of black? magic, is perfectly understandable and straightforward thing. Many people believe that hypnotism is "pure fake," but many 'psychologists accept it. Anybody can become ji. hypnotist; it i3.a fairly simple thing-for -a person'to hypnotise himself and it .is done every day by thousands of people who never suspect that this is "'what.is happening to them, There are many causes of selfhypnotism. One of tho great stimuli is intense mental strain; another is fear. In a; moment of great stress a person can- do incredible things and afterwards remember nothing of the experience. ; • There is a case well-known in Britain, of . a man who heard screams from a burning building and dashed inside to the rescue of-' three trapped children. Fbr more than half an hour he worked hard and'succeeded in extricating the children, fjien : help arrived, and in the bustle the man disappeared. .'-'-How Imagination Works. " An ' hojir later he was discovered wandering- in (streets a mile away frpm the scene of the fire. His hands and face were badly burned 'and he had not the faintest recollection of how he received those injuries. His mind must havo worked incredibly rapidly during the time he was effecting the rescue, but no memory was left... Unquestionably the emotional state induced by the near tragedy and the superlative -necessity for instant action and' concentration on the task before him produced' a/state of temporary hypnotism. :'la 'Paris Recently psychologists discovered a man ywho ' regularly hypnotised himself into thinking, that he could, smell tho smoke of candles in the church service, whenever he listened in to the broadcast '■ervic.c, . There is another caso of a man and his wife, who were listeningrin tp a vitel.ess, .programme when their house caqgbtfiie:" So intense was their concen-

..tration on their occupation of tho-moment that they were in clanger of being trapped by the flames before they realised what was happening. • Any person who "loses himself" while reading a Wallace ." thriller ".. or listening to a moving play, is partially hypnotised in the "same way. Usually these moderate states of self-hypnotism pass off easily; sometimes the hypnotic state is deeper and lasts longer. There are three distinct cases on record of people who, while in a stptii of extreme depression, have imagined they wore going blind, and have actually lost, the powor to see for a time, regaining it b> J suggestion to them by someone of_ strong will that they, were not really blind../ Monotony often leads people to fall into a hvpnotic stale. Workers in mass-pro-duction factories who perform the same uninteresting action all day long, day after day, not infrequently become partially hypnotised by the machine and allow themselves to bo injured in a factory accident. . These examples aro all the equivalent, on a less intense scale, of visions like that of the Angels of Mons. The two scientists assert that the important conditions which tend to produce hypnotism were all present at the time of the Mons manifestation. One condition is intenso emotional pressure, another is groat concentration of the attention, and the third is suggestion. _ _ ■ . Probably never before in history of the world had such a body of men been under conditions like those at Mons. The men were in a stato of great strain, the factor of concentration was provided.by the natural desire to watch for the advancing Germans, and there were the torn and drifting smoke clouds, illuminated by occasional , shell-bursts, not unlikely to impress battle-wracked men as resembling angels or human forms.

Another famous war vision; reported rby. wounded.-soldiers- on- scores' of - battle-' fields and in many hospitals, was the vision of the " White Comrade," an appearance of Jesus Christ clad in a white robe and going from, cot- to cot in the hospital, or from shell-holet to shell-, hole on , the battlefield' ministering to the wounded. There. , are probably hundreds of men still alive who are prepared to swear* that they saw this '. vision of the Saviour. The Indian rope trick, witnessed by thousands of people, is capable of only the same explanation. • Hardly anyone seeing the trick has been able to resist the illusion that the boy actually climbs the rope and disappears. Most famous of all historic visions are those of Joan of Arc, which led the ignorant peasant girl to, become the trusted leader of a great army.' The visions which she said she saw she did see—" in her mind's eye." What wjis happening in the girl's brain was an instance of selfhypnotism brought on by her personal sufferings and by her intense emotional and religious nature. Similar cases to thesb • mentioned aje put forward in support of tho scientists' theory. It now remains for the Mons men to " check up" their experiences in the light of this detachedly .scientific view of the matter.