Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-04-01
War Visions and Psychology
BY Garret p. Serviss

The teeming subsoil of humanity has
been so deeply ploughed by the great
war that host of ideas and iancies
released from the depths now movers
over the fields of thought. 10 be, perhaps
transformed for future generations into
legends as grandiose as the events tha'
brought them forth.
Some of these inklings and gimmer-
ngs out of the unknown and the un-
familiar are of the nature of portents
others hint at vast expansion of human
knowledge in directions that have hith-
erto seemed definitely barred.
Among the portents are battlevisions
matching that which Constantine be-
held in the sky, and which Transformed
tie stndard, and with il the faith. OF
imperial Rome; or recalling the sanity
plantasms by which, eight hundred
years ago. the Crusaders were spurred
t. supereminent valor and sacrifice on
the march of Jerusalem
One of the most notable things about
these modern visions is the preliminary
fact that they should have appeared OF
have been believed to appear in TINS
scientific age at all. How strange 70
read, of clear-headed soldiers and ofh'
GERS from up-to-dae schools ana sur
r0undings. armed with rnVolVers, ma
cline guns. and all the Intensely mater
ialstic and scientific apparatus of MOD
ern warfare, seeing St George, 81.
Michael or Joan OF Arc leading ano
encouraging the eXhausted English and
French during the terrible struggle that
stopped the first mighty rush OF the
German hordes toward Paris.
The historian who leave these things
ont OF his narrative of lun great wal
will do wrong-wrong cy.u TO science
for however deceptive fa apparltionS
may have been, 1t is the hsIness OF the
cultivators of science to explain the de-
ception, to sho wwhy 1t or. rs ana no"
and why the eye and the mlnd are
misIed. Unless you do that you car
never dissuade anybody from believing
that he has seen a ghost.
Moreover, these modern Instances OF
apparent supernaturalism, coming at
time when societies for psychical re.
search flourish and wheu such phe'
nomena as telepathy are knocking at the
door and claiming the right to enter
and be seriously investigated will moi
he thrown aside and forgotten We
shall see them reappearing in various
departments of literature, s pegs or
which to hang both fiction and philos'
optical speculation.
striking, but not ineXpcable, fact
Is that so many simultaneously rec
ognized the same appatious. For in
stance. take a royal artilleyman's naive
relation to an English nlrse, Miss
CampbeU. 1t was in field hospital
after the English had held up the Ger
mans in one of the fierGest struggles
berore the first battle of the Marine.
Another wonded British soldier whe
had been a wesleyan minister, had SEN
for the nurse because h. hoped tha
she might have an English coin or media
bearing the figure of st. George, which
he wished to compare with what h'
had seen in the battle. As he told hi:
story the nurse betrayed some incred
ulitv. whereupon the artilleryman on an
adjoining cot broke in:
"rt's true. Sister; we all saw it. First
there was a sort OF yellow mist risn
before the Germans as they come on tC
tbe top of the hill-come or like a solit
wall, they did-no end to en-. | jus
give up. No more fightiu the whole
German race, thinks l. The next minute
comes this funny cloud Of light, anC
when 1t clears off, there's tall MAJ
with yellow hair, in golden armor, OF
white horse, holdn' up his sword, anC
his mouth open like as if he was sayin'
Come on, boys, I'll put the ltybosh OF
the devils-sort of this is my picnic eX
preston. Then, before you could sa!
| knife the Germans had turned, ant
we after 'em, fighting like ninety"
or course. plain common sense would
begin by inquiring whether there wa'
not in that battle some ycllow-hairet
English officer, riding a white horse
whose khaki uniform, seen through thu
smoke. and scintillant with medals anC
trainings, might have seemed the COLDER
armor of st. George to the excited eye
Of men WHO obeyed the electric impuls,
of his gesture.
In such momentary impressions, wheT
the brain is in a whirl, the fancies O.
tho mind sometimes transform the re
| norts OF the eye, and make their possess
sor for an instant as mad as Dor
ouixote. when he mistook the brass
ha Gin that the barber had capped OF
his head, as he logged on his mul,
through the Spanish sunshine, for the
Golden helmet of Mambrino.
And vet somehow, such an explana
tion does not satisfy. 1t is too unsym
no athetic toward the creative imagina
ton. which the most humbly endowed
of us possess in a degree seldom rea
Iized, and which fills our lives will
nictures that often affect us more pow
erfully than realities. The imaginativ,
boy mounted on his rockinghorse /.
Napoleon crossing the Alps, and tha
fancied transformation becomes, for the
moment, absolutely real TO him. Grown
up, he will remember it like fact wher
actual facts of his boyhood have faded
| In a desperate battle the primal i'm
pulses may break all bonds, and the i'm
aginative man becomes as boy again
may once more substitute illusions fol
facts.
Another phase of this subject, which
there is no space now to discuss, is rep
resented by the question that has beer
asked. Did psychologist force" con
centrated by the united will to vic
tory" Of an aroused world. play par
| in the overthrow of imperial Germany
which psychology may some day scien
4 tf6pnII,, oppount fOr2