Part 6

“And does God permit this horror?” it asked.

“He permits it on the planet Earth.”

Now the word God is not an adequate translation of the idea expressed in the angel’s question, but let it stand. The real idea is untranslatable by any one word in any language of earth. It was a composite of Love and Time and Purpose, raised to the highest power, an idea for which I can find no other word than God.

“Earth is a strange star!” the angel said.

“The inhabitants of this world have a common saying to that effect,” I answered. “It is a fragment of race wisdom, handed down from their remote ancestors, who, when they first tried to adjust their celestial consciousness to the baffling conditions of this star on which they had been placed for their education, observed to one another, ‘This is a strange world.’”

“And are they obliged to perpetrate this horror before us by the conditions of this planet?”

“No.”

“Then why do they do it?”

“From force of habit.”

“Then was it ever necessary?”

“In far away times,” I said, “men were more isolated than at present, there were fewer of them in incarnation, and a brilliant archangel who had their training in charge taught them to develop courage and resource, and to accentuate their egos, by struggling with each other, two by two.”

“But there are millions of beings down there!” the angel exclaimed. “And I see bodies fall by thousands!”

“That is what they call a great victory,” I said, “and one of their commanders gives to those who have slaughtered a vast number a little iron cross.”

“An iron cross? Why iron?”

“Iron is the metal of Mars,” I said, “Mars, their war-god.”

“And why a cross?”

“It is the symbol of their Christ.”

“The one who died down here to make men love one another?”

“The same,” I admitted.

“Truly, I agree with the remote ancestors of these people, from whom they have inherited the saying, ‘This is a strange world.’”

“Would you like to approach nearer?” I asked.

The stranger hesitated, then said, with a patient smile:

“My friend,” glancing at the Beautiful Being, “wishes me to learn something of this star. I will approach nearer.”

We descended to perhaps a hundred feet above the lane which separated the enemies.

“Look!” exclaimed the stranger. “The souls are leaving their bodies! Is that the purpose of this business, to free souls from bondage?”

“Not directly,” I answered. “Each would like to hold the other in bondage; but being unable to do that to any great extent, they take the opposite way.”

The stranger looked more confused.

“My friend,” explained the Beautiful Being to me, “came from a region where the Law of Opposites does not apply.”

“You have never taken me there in our wanderings!” I exclaimed.

“No, you are so attached to the Law of Opposites.”

This was an old jest between me and the Beautiful Being.

“Look!” the stranger interrupted me. “There is a soul coming toward us now.”

I went forward to greet the newcomer. He was a German officer.

“Welcome,” I said, but he seemed not to understand me. The face of his astral body was contorted, as if he had died in pain.

Now the Beautiful Being seems to know all the languages of earth; and though the purity of its nature is such that few on earth can understand it, yet when a soul leaves its body it can understand the speech of the Beautiful Being if there is anything in its nature that responds to the higher vibration which makes the life of that angel so intense and wonderful.

“Welcome,” said the Beautiful Being to the soul, in the accents of his native land.

“Where am I?” asked the bewildered soul.

“You are in the region above the world,” the Beautiful Being answered.

“You mean----”

“I mean that your name will be in the list of the dead.”

“Then it has come!”

“Yes.”

“But I always feared death.”

“You see it is nothing to fear.”

“Where is the Kaiser?”

“At his headquarters.”

“Can I not report to him?”

“If you wish.”

We moved farther east--slowly, for the newly freed soul had not yet learned that distance is nothing.

We found the War-Lord seated beside a table looking at a map. His face was drawn and haggard.

“There,” I said to the stranger, “is the man who is believed, by the whole world outside his own country, to have caused this vast war.”

The stranger (and also the soul) approached and read the thoughts in the brain of the War-Lord. I give them as they were, disconnected, tragic in their import:

“The slaughter of our forces! God punish England! I am the Lord’s chosen! I cannot make a mistake! My generals have blundered. I will degrade--(the name of our newly-arrived charge). This defeat is his fault. I ordered him to take those trenches. He has lost our own instead. I cannot make a mistake! I am the Lord’s chosen!”

The Beautiful Being turned to the soul who had been a General.

“Do you wish to report yourself to the Kaiser?”

The eyes he turned to us were sad.

“I will not trouble the Kaiser,” he said.

A silence had fallen between us. After a little, the Beautiful Being turned to the General again, and its face was soft with pity.

“Can I not do something for you?” it asked.

“Will you take me to my mother, who died of grief for my only brother’s death, in the early days of the war? I am very tired. I want to see my old mother.”

The eyes of the rose-veiled stranger were luminous with wonder.

“Why, there is even love in this strange star!” it said.

_April 11._

LETTER XX

ABOVE THE BATTLEFIELDS

PICTURE to yourself a battlefield, a long-stretching irregular double line of men and guns and horses and all the paraphernalia of war.

In the old days on earth I once gave some study to the theory and practice of war, but that labor had little value in preparing me to study this war. Not only did it take for granted conditions that no longer exist, but my point of observation then was an imaginary station on one side or the other of an imaginary field; now I am really here, there and everywhere. I read the thoughts of the commanders on both sides, I am with the men in the trenches sometimes half-buried in mud and water, I am riding with the cavalry, I go forward with the guns of the artillery, I go out and up with the escaping spirits of the dead--go with them into the hell of confusion that almost always swallows them for a time after they are violently thrust from their bodies.

Truly, “War is hell!” Have no glorious delusions to the contrary, you who dwell in the haunts of peace and babble of what you know not.

The horrors do not end when the guns cease firing. The dark and silent night of rain is full of souls in bewilderment and torment. Often one will grope his way hither and thither, seeking to find a trench-mate to whom he had become attached in the _camaraderie_ of war--that sweet flower which grows upon an ugly stem. Often they live over and over again the rage and madness of the attack; they plunge an imaginary bayonet into the form of an imaginary foe; or, if a mass of them are together, and they generally are, they strike recklessly at anything before them, conscious always of an _opposing_ force.

The General of whom I wrote in my last letter was a man of marked spiritual development; he soon broke away from the entanglements of matter; he was a devotee to whom his country was a god and his Emperor a hero to be followed with aspiration. But most men who die on the battlefields are common soldiers who fight because it is the will of the mass behind them. They generally go out into darkness for a time, and most of them wander in darkness and bewilderment for varying periods.

Some, on the contrary, are vividly conscious almost from the hour of death. These may attack the men of the opposing army while they sleep. The dreams of the battlefields are terrible in their intensity.

Sometimes again, for in the general confusion distinctions may be quite lost, souls that had believed themselves enemies cling together in the tragic yearning of the dark that separates the worlds of the “invisible.” In their great need they do not know their former friends from their former enemies. Another pale flower that grows from the ugly stem of war!

The astral forms of men of low development are often found here in shocking distortion, their consciousness only a glimmer, and with no power of feeling anything but pain. No wonder the dreams of the unselfish lovers of humanity are full of horror during these dark nights of the world, for there are many noncombatants in all lands whose hours of sleep are given to a devoted labor for the souls that need help so horribly. There is one man whom you know who bears at this time a burden almost superhuman, and speaks of it to no one.

It is needless for me to say how you yourself spent the nights of many months, and when we bade you cease that labor it was only that you might have more strength for the labor of writing these pages at my dictation. A soul still held in the flesh cannot work all day and all night. That is burning the astral candle at both ends.

When you return to the countries now devastated by war, some of your friends will relate to you experiences similar to your own during these terrible months. They who can be used are called upon when the need is greatest, and the need is immense at this time.

Realize that those souls in the lower regions of the astral world are actually in space near the ground of the physical planet. Those who hang over the battlefields where they met their fate are still thrilled or horrified by the noise of the battle horns, they can still hear the shriek of shells and feel the shattering force of the explosions. Day in, day out these unfortunate earth-bound ones live over and over again the emotions of war, night after night they dread the morning when the sounds will begin again. They cannot get away. They are not free merely because their bodies are buried under a few feet of earth, or worse still left unburied.

I advise you to avoid for some years at least the actual scenes of these battles. You can go to Switzerland or to the more southern regions of France, but do not stay long in Northern France or Belgium, or in any other place that may be thus affected.

The thought world of England is just now troubled, but the layer of astral matter immediately above the earth is not full of the awful emanations of death. Astral forms go there from the more terrible region, but in order to go they must have themselves broken away from the immediate scene of their worst suffering.

It is easier to protect oneself from sad thought-forms than from the distracted astral entities and the “boiling” astral matter that lie above those battlefields.

Why, even the field of Waterloo before this war was not a pleasant place to spend the night. After a lapse of time you may briefly visit the scenes of these recent battles, for the sake of the practical experience; but do not go there just yet. The best place in Europe for a long period will be the mountains of Switzerland. You should spend much time there.

Do you remember telling me how, when a child, you used to see the forms of American Indians on the hills and in the valleys of your native State? They were those who many years before had walked those hills and valleys in the sunlight, and who were still held in the tenuous matter above that region. The eyes of childhood are sometimes very clear. Above those battlefields of Europe the sensitive eye may see for many years the forms of those who will not be able to make their escape. And I do not mean akashic records. War is hell, and the hell does not end with the signing of peace papers.

That is one reason why we want you, and those others who believe in brotherhood, to carry that spirit of brotherhood among the nations that have been at war. You have no conception of the power of a quiet faith in a great and true idea. The man who really loves his fellows has a wider influence than his own immediate circle of friends. The atmosphere around him is permeated with that brotherly love, and sensitive souls can feel it.

Some day sail up the Rhine with that sentiment in your heart.

_April 12._

LETTER XXI

A SOUL IN PURGATORY

DARE I talk to you of the purgatory to which the rage of battle conducts so many souls that only a little while before walked the earth as men, and went their daily round from house to office, loving their wives and children and exchanging worldly commonplaces in the intervals of work, all unmindful that they were hourly drifting toward the Great Event? Yes, I dare.

We will follow one soul that I myself followed. His story I can reconstruct from memory, for every act of it is stamped upon my mind. No, I do not need brain-cells to remember with. Neither will you--when you have escaped the prison of your brain-cells.

The man was an officer in an English regiment and he was a bachelor. Outwardly he was much like other men, but his consciousness was different. He lived in a world of his own, for he was a reader and a thinker. He was not a very good man. Not _all_ Englishmen are good even now when England is at war, you who bristle at any criticism of your beloved maternal island--you who write for me!

This man was not very good because there was so little love in his heart. He was not incapable of love, yet he was unable to awaken love in others, and so was soul-starved. But sometimes he was conscious of a great yearning, and when the yearning came he was impatient, and took a drink, or cursed his servant, or both. Sometimes when he was most impatient with the world and with himself, he went on a “spree.”

The war began.

His natural impatience found something congenial in the hurry and noise of the expedition. He was glad to go.

He had known a German in London and had disliked him thoroughly. The German talked too much, and his loud tones jarred on the sensitive ears of the refined officer. As he led his men into battle he thought of this German. He felt that he was battling with him at last face to face, and the feeling gave him a thrill of satisfaction.

Hate had become an almost sensual luxury. The German had fascinated by his blustering personality a woman of rather coarse type to whom the officer had been impatiently attracted. He hated himself for the attraction, and he hated the German for frustrating it. We always hate those who frustrate the emotions we hate.

The officer was killed by a German bullet, in the early days of the war. Where? Oh, no matter where! There are those who might recognize the man, and I am not a betrayer of unwilling confidences. When I listen at the keyhole of life I never report too much of what I hear. I use my discretion.

I shall call this man my friend, for I was so much his friend that I have a right to claim him.

Before the battle in which my friend met death I had lingered near him, with a desire to soften the hard feelings in his heart. Those feelings are not usual among the soldiers of a particular section of the northern battle-line. To them fighting is a sort of glorified sport--or it was so last September.

My friend was an exception, and that is why I choose to write about him, that my assertion of his exceptional qualities may keep the reader from shuddering too much. I should not like my readers to feel that their friends went through a similar experience. You who hang above this page, my friend was not your friend. The experiences of your friends were less terrible. They were all better men than he, because you loved them, and this man was not good because he was not loved enough.

He met death by a rifle bullet. Then all became dark before him, and he was unconscious for a time.

He was awakened by the noise of a bursting shell.

“The battle has begun,” he thought. “Damn that man! He should have awakened me at dawn.”

He was among the men of his regiment. They seemed larger than usual, and blurred in outline. He rubbed his eyes.

“Hell and damnation! Who have they put in my place?” For he saw a minor officer who commanded where he had commanded.

He turned away, then came back again. He would demand to know! He started toward the place where his superior officer should have been, some distance away, and found himself _instantly_ there.

“What is the matter with me?” he thought. “Have I lost my mind?”

He saluted the officer, who paid no attention to him.

“Am I asleep?” he wondered.

He went up to a soldier who was loading a rifle and touched him on the arm. The soldier also paid no attention. He gripped the man’s arm. Still he paid no attention, but raised his rifle and fired.

My friend went toward two men who were talking together.

“Poor old ------!” he heard one of them say. “Shot through the heart! He was a good officer, though a surly fellow. I’m sorry he’s dead.”

The ------ they spoke of was himself.

“Shot through the heart--a good officer--a surly fellow--dead!”

He knew. Knowledge sometimes comes more slowly. He was “dead.”

“Just my luck!” was his instinctive thought.

Another shell burst behind him with a shattering report.

Suddenly he saw before him a face that riveted his attention. It was a malignant, an insolent face. Then it changed into the face of his enemy, the German back in England whom he hated.

“So it’s you, is it?” he asked.

The spectre made no answer, but changed its shape again. This time it was like the woman whom my friend had hated himself for liking.

“You, too!” he said, impatiently.

Again the spectre changed countenance. It was like a servant whom my friend had cursed once too often, and who had left him the year before.

“Are you, too, dead?” he asked; but the face before him had now resumed its original appearance. It was merely a malignant, insolent face, resembling nobody in particular.

“What are you, anyway?” my friend demanded; but still there was no answer.

The eye of the spectre interested him--the left eye. As he gazed at it, the eye gradually enlarged until it seemed the size of a target in a shooting-gallery. The iris, of a peculiar greenish-blue, was in the very middle of the eye, so that the white showed all round. The black pupil stared at him with its concentrated malice--a pupil large as a saucer.

“Why do you do that?” demanded my friend; but the eye still made no answer.

Then it vanished.

A troop of hateful shades came in its place, ugly shades, some human, some subhuman. Another shell burst nearby, and the shades began to dance. They caught at him and whirled him around with them, around and around until he was dizzy. Then suddenly they stopped, and each and all of them changed into the form of the German back in England whom my friend had hated. Then another group of mad beings mingled with them. They also changed suddenly--there were a dozen duplicates of the woman whom my friend had hated himself for liking, and they and the duplicates of his enemy caught one another’s hands and kissed each other.

Sick, revolted, my friend wished himself away, and he was away. He was over among the soldiers of the German army across the plain. He heard the sounds of the language he disliked.

“What the devil!” he thought, and the devil stood before him, hoofs, horns and tail complete.

“Hadn’t thought of me before, had you?” sneered the evil being.

My friend was hurt and bewildered by the appearance, for it looked, with all its unlovely accessories, so like himself.

“Will you, too, change form in a moment?” he asked.

“Oh, no! I change slowly. I only change as you change.”

“What do you mean?”

“You only can change me.”

“Change, then!” said my friend. But the demon remained as before.

“Change!” repeated my friend; but still the figure before him changed not at all.

“Then you lied when you said I could change you!”

“I said that I change slowly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I only change as you change.”

“And I have not changed, then?”

“It is my business to keep you from changing.”

In company with his devil my friend now went through scenes which I refrain from describing, Goethe in the Walpurgis Night having done it so well before me. Reckless, desperate, he followed his leader until he was weary and exhausted. Days, weeks passed away, like a nightmare.

“Can I never get rid of you?” he asked his companion.

“Yes, you can get rid of me.”

“How?”

“By getting rid of yourself.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“Yes, that’s easier said than done.”

Often they found themselves on the battlefield in the fighting line, or at the mess of the soldiers. The smell of the coffee and of cooking meats brought temporary satisfaction to my friend. He tried to drink from brandy flasks tilted to the mouths of men who could not see him or protest; he steeped himself in hungers and despairs. His companions were always changing themselves into the forms of the man he hated and the woman he loved. He witnessed their coarse love-making. Sometimes the simulacrum of the woman turned to him with a friendly word. He cursed her, but clung to her hand. But always she vanished when his mouth yearned to hers.

Sometimes in a great battle the rage of war awoke in him. He hurled himself at the men of the opposing army, as if he would take revenge upon them for all he was suffering. He struggled to tear the rifles from their hands, and when one of them passed out of the body he tried to awake him from the darkness and the sleep into which he was sinking; but never could he succeed in doing this. Never could he succeed in doing anything. His very existence was failure and futility and discouragement.

One day I came to him and touched him on the forehead.

“You are not like these others,” he said, dully. “Where do you come from?”

“I came from a distance,” I said. “Would you like to go with me?”

“Anywhere away from here,” he assented.

“Do you want to be alone?”

“No. It is worst when I am alone.”

“The worst is over,” I said.

“What do you mean?”