foolish!" he
cried angrily. "That's all right," I remarked quietly. "Now I know you
won't mind sleeping in our haunted room; many foolish people do object."
"Great Scott!" he ejaculated, "no haunted room for me!" Nor would he
even look at it. He would not face the logical sequence of his dogmatic
unbelief. Only a brave man dare express all he believes.

Now it is well known that every advance in scientific knowledge is
greeted with mocking laughter. We know the jeers with which even clever
men greeted the Marconi claims. It is not so many years ago that a
distinguished member of the French Academy of Science rose up amongst
his colleagues and pronounced the Edison phonograph to be nothing more
than an acoustical illusion. So we are told that soldiers' visions are
optical illusions. That is no answer. Call them optical delusions if you
like, then the query arises what causes these optical delusions, of
which we have countless instances, which inform a man of the hour, and
sometimes the manner, of his death? To call an effect by another name
does not dispose of the cause of such effect, nor is it any solution of
the mystery.

Few thinkers now, worthy of the name, seriously dispute the existence of
super-natural forces and influences. The whole system of Christianity,
of belief in all ages, is founded upon such things. To-day front-rank
men are investigating in avenues of research where once they sneered.
There is much fraud and cheap talk in ordinary life, but not under fire.
Men are not cheap then, nor are they paltry. Strange that where death is
busiest the evidence of life beyond and above it all should abound. The
invisible, full of awe, is also full of teaching, it is pregnant with
whispers. The mind, tuned up to a new tension, receives all kinds of
Marconi-like messages. What sends such whispers? Is it that in the
moment of supreme self-sacrifice and splendid devotion to duty that
spiritual perceptions are sharpened? Who shall say? "He was hit, and he
rushed forward shouting, 'Why, there's my----' then he dropped dead,
but he saw someone, of that I am sure." So spoke a man of the A.S.C.,
who saw his comrade die. Deep calls to deep, and if we put our ear to
the call we may hear the message. On the battlefield, as in no other
place, there is the call of soul to soul, of heart to heart, intensified
by all our powers of emotion, which duty calls forth at their best.
Tommy Atkins stares more fixedly into the dim future