Page:Angels of Mons second edition.pdf/37

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

INTRODUCTION

in the case of Miss Campbell's reply, and my reply to her reply. These events, of course, took place after the issue of the book. But, in the main, we may now suppose ourselves to be contemplating the universe and the publication of "The Bowmen" on August 10th, 1915. Up to that date my own position was that recorded in the previous pages. I had so far received no single morsel of evidence to show that anything of a supernormal nature had happened during the retreat from Mons. Indeed, an old friend of mine, a soldier of some months' standing at the Front, had just written to me, enclosing a newspaper cutting concerning "the Angels," and asking me in bewilderment what it was all about.

The army, he said, was a perfect hotbed of rumours of all sorts, and some of them were wild enough, but so far he

35