I have one other association with the Italian front which I may include here. It is embalmed in the Annals of the Psychic Research Society. I have several times in my life awakened from sleep with some strong impressions of knowledge gained still lingering in my brain. In one case, for example, I got the strange name Nalderu so vividly that I wrote it down between two stretches of insensibility and found it on the outside of my cheque book next morning. A month later I started for Australia in the S.S. Naldera of which I had then never heard. In this particular Italian instance I got the word Piave, absolutely ringing in my head. I knew it as a river some seventy miles to the rear of the Italian front and quite unconnected with the war. None the less the impression was so strong that I wrote the incident down and had it signed by two witnesses. Months passed and the Italian battle line was rolled back to the Piave, which became a familiar word. Some said it would go back further. I was sure it would not. I argued that if the abnormal forces, whatever they may be, had taken such pains to impress the matter upon me, it must needs be good news which they were conveying, since I had needed cheering at the time. Therefore I felt sure that some great victory and the turning point of the war would come on the Piave. So sure was I that I wrote to my friend Mr. Lacon Watson, who was on the Italian front, and the incident got into the Italian press. It could have nothing but a good effect upon their morale. Finally it is a matter of history how completely my impression was justified, and how the most shattering victory of the whole war was gained at that very spot.
There is the fact, amply proved by documents and beyond all possible coincidence. As to the explanation some may say that our own subconscious self has power of foresight. If so it is a singularly dead instinct, seldom or never used. Others may say that our “dead” can see further than we, and try when we are asleep and in spiritual touch with us, to give us knowledge and consolation. The latter is my own solution of the mystery.
CHAPTER XXX
EXPERIENCES ON THE FRENCH FRONT
A Dreadful Reception—Robert Donald—Clemenceau—Soissons Cathedral—The Commandant’s Cane—The Extreme Outpost—Adonis—General Henneque—Cyrano in the Argonne—Tir Rapide—French Canadian—Wound Stripes.
When I got back to Paris I had a dreadful reception, for as I dismounted from the railway car a British military policeman in his flat red cap stepped up to me and saluted.
“This is bad news, sir,” said he.
“What is it?” I gasped.
“Lord Kitchener, sir. Drowned!”
“Good God!” I cried.