riod was it laid down as something new, that the shortest
distance between two points would be a straight line. No mathematician
has ever proved that there is no boundary to space, but something within
me tells me that there can be no such boundary. Even Reason tells me
that an impassable boundary would only serve to indicate the unlimited
extension beyond.

In all ages we have the mystic. Now the mystic is common to all
religions. He is the man who has felt the touch of spiritual beings, the
call of Heavenly things, and we have to explain him. In seeking to do
this we shall realize some of the truth of the things soldiers see which
we have called "The Weird in War."

V

ANGELS

The evidence for the existence and the appearance of angels does not
rest on the testimony merely of men who fought at Mons. But even that
evidence which is accepted by the talented author of _The Bowmen_
requires some explaining away and he admits that there is a difficulty
in ignoring it. But there is the accumulating evidence of the ages. When
we have explained away the soldiers' delusions, we have to confront
those of the world's wisest sons--giants in thought. We have to confront
the fact that all great religions have the theory of angels.

After all, every good thought may be the whisper of an angel, every
beautiful prospect may be but the glint of the wing, every ray of light
and heat but the waving of the robes of those higher spiritual
intelligences which rush hither and thither on God's service, whose
faces see God in Heaven. Such a belief is just as sound, and far more
philosophical than any of the guesses I have read so far, given us as
"explanation" of such phenomena.

I am in hearty agreement with much that Mr. Arthur Machen writes in his
book _The Bowmen_. It is a book everyone should read. That splendid
story of failure and triumph, the Retreat from Mons, prompted him to
write a story on an Angelic Host coming to the aid of the British force.
He wrote it after the manner of the journalist who is an eye-witness of
the event. Many people still believe what they read in the newspapers;
and many people believed his story. But he is altogether wrong when he
imagines that he is the author of the belief in Angelic visions. I was
in France hearing stories of angelic intervention long before Mr. Machen
wrote his delightful yarn. A frog might as well imagine that his croak
is responsible for the whole world of music, as to p