FICTION.
THE UNSEEN HOST.t ME. Wenn, who has served with the 9th Argyll and Sutherland High-
landers in Flanders, prefaces his collection of stories and studies with a frank caveat to persons of ultra-rationalist views. To those who have no belief in or toleration of " the mere possibility of anything which cannot be explained in terms of materialistic experience," he offers but one word of advice—" Do not read this book; it will only annoy you." It is not intended for them, but for those who are old-fashioned enough to believe that " there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy." Mr. Warr has his home in the High. lands, where a belief in second-sight is ineradicable, and certainly has not been weakened by the events of the last two years. But he has no desire to add to the controversies which have surged round the " Angels of Mona." His stories are all concerned with the supernatural, but he does not attempt to explain them. He is content to affirm that to the best of his knowledge they are all true, and it is only because he personally believes in their truth that they are now given to the public. But by " true " ho does not mean that the spiritual can be seen by the eye of flesh ; it is only spirit that can behold spirit, and " spiritual appearances, if seen or heard at all, can only be discernible spiritually, by some indefinable sympathy of soul with soul." He holds that it is best to keep an open mind on things as to whose service or purpose or existence we cannot even guess. But while he refrains from dogmatizing, he is inclined to hope that his book, or parts of it, " may afford a sense of security to a few who are going forth to take up the sword which has fallen from the hands of others. It may help them to trust in the presence of an ` Unseen Host' about their daily path. It may assist those of them to whom the call shall come to enter, like true British soldiers, with level eyes and laughing lips, the valley of the shadow of death." After reading his book we cannot but think that this hope will be realized. And the force of his appeal is strengthened by the fact that these stories are not the products of a home-keeping imagination, but have their root in the author's experiences in the Ypres Salient. The most serious criticism that could be aimed at them by a psychological investigator is that in no single instance do they represent a first-hand contact with the supra-normal. The tale from which the collection takes its name was told the author by a soldier in a tavern at Ypres in April, 1915. The story of the vengeance which befell the German butchers and desecrators, narrated in " The Wayside Cross," is ap- parently derived from Belgian peasants. "All's Well," a story of the apparition of a dead soldier to his father in the Highlands ; " The Supreme Sacrifice," a tale of the estrangement and reconciliation in death of two brothers ; and " The Strange Man of the Sea," which tells of the miraculous rescue and conversion of a bluejacket, aro related • The Slays of the War Zone. By the Wight Hon. W. B. Bailey, C.B. London: Chapman and Hall. 110s. ed. net.] The Unseen Host : Stories of the Great War. By Charles L. Wan. Paisley: Alexander Gardner. Re. 6d. the Great any circumstantial evidence or indication of the author's contact with the characters concerned. And the moving episode of the reunion in death of the drowned fisherman and his betrothed if given on the authority of a Roman Catholic priest in the Northern Highlands. But to say this is not to impugn the sincerity of Mr. Warr. The form of presentation varies, and a certain amount of dramatization— notably in the story of the two brothers—is introduced. What really matters is that one and all are founded on occurrences which he believes to have taken place, and that one and all will confirm the wide-spread belief in the presence of the " Unseen Host " which has helped so many brave men in their darkest hours.
Excellent as these stories are in their generous humanity and their happy use of local colour, a higher level is attained in two papers which do not come under the head of fiction in the most liberal interpretation of the word. The first is an appreciation of that very gallant and noble- hearted Scots gentleman, Colonel James Clark, who fell at Hooge on May 10th, 1915. Two anecdotes illustrate what manner of man he was. " I've no friends to help me,' once stated a morose defaulter at an orderly room. Yes, you have one,' replied the Colonel, ' and his name's James Clark.' " He was "far more than his men's leader, ho was their brother and their guide." And again : " It took a great man, morning after morning, to sit by the door of his dug-out with his open Bible in his hand, unashamed before men." All his life he had been a champion of lost causes, and it was strangely appropriate that " he fell in death, as so often in life, gallantly fighting what was apparently a lost and hopeless cause "—the defence of Ypres by decimated British ranks against masses of German soldiery. Truly one might say of him, in the words of Micah : " What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " The other paper to which wo refer is that which describes the Service of Intercession in St. Paul's on the first anniversary of the declaration of war. We cannot refrain from quoting what is perhaps the most moving passage in Mr. Warr's reflections on this celebration :- "Looking up, my gaze was fascinated by a row of blinded soldiers. Their sightless eyes were stating straight before them. On their faces was a strange unearthly look as of those who see beyond the veil. I wondered then, as I wonder now, if to their darkened vision there came the spiritual insight, keener than all reasoning and stranger than all logic, which can pierce the mists of earthly things. I have met old men in tho mountains and glens of the west who told me that when the mortal senses failed, tho senses of the soul awoke to greater life. And one told me, years ago, that it was only when his eyes waxed dim and his ears grow dull that he could see the Little Folk as they danced in the shadowy glens at night time, and could hear the musio which the soft winds whisper, and know the love-songs of the moon- beams as they kissed the dimpled waters into silver. I feel that those sightless soldiers in S. Paul's saw clearly the vast congregation of the holy dead, the spirit armies of those who for our sakes have fought and bled and died, and still with greater power are fighting for us and praying for us and loading us on to victory. I know that they were present that day although invisible, that they have put off their blood- stained khaki and have put on the armour of light, that the now song of victory is in their mouths, that their prayers wore mingled with ours, that their hymns were joined to ours. For that dear friend of mine whose earthly body sleeps in Flanders but whose spirit is with the winged hosts of heaven, was very near me then, and spoke to me, and helped me, and made me bravo again ; and told me, with an assurance stronger than all faith or finite knowledge, of a meeting which awaits us beyond the shadows and the tears of this dying world."
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