also as a symbol of Christ as Mr. Isaac Myer says in his monograph on Scarabs, pages 63-64:

"After the Christian era the influence of the cult of the scarab was still left. St. Ambrose, archbishop of Milan, calls Jesus 'the good Scarabaeus, who rolled up before him the hitherto unshapen mud of our bodies.' St. Epiphanius has been quoted as saying of Christ: 'He is the scarabaeus of God,' and indeed it appears likely that what may be called Christian forms of the scarab yet exist. One has been described as representing the crucifixion of Jesus; it is white and the engraving is in green, on the back are two palm branches; many others have been found apparently engraved with the Latin cross."

AN ITALIAN WAR HERO.

Captain Riccardo Cipriani, some of whose letters from the Italian front we are publishing on another page, had been an officer in the Italian navy for twenty years but left the navy about six years ago. When war was declared he joined the aviation corps, as his letters explain, and died in action. The King of Italy awarded him a medal "for military valor" which was delivered to one of his sisters at the Naval Academy in his native city Leghorn. At the time of the award the King made the following statement: "Free from any kind of military obligation he enrolled as a simple military observer in the aviation service. In this capacity he made many daring and fruitful observations of the enemy's fire. Flying almost always under fire of the enemy, he finally fell when the enemy's shrapnel set fire to his aeroplane.”

The Leghorn Gazette wrote on the same occasion: "He had a brilliant career, which he voluntarily abandoned when access to the highest grades in the navy could be considered practically a sure thing for him. But last May, when Italy declared war against Austria, Cipriani, eager to give his services to his country, although he was entitled to reenter the navy with the rank of capitano di fregata, chose to enroll as simple military observer in the aviation corps. He made many important flights, rendering great service, and showing at all times reckless courage....Our brave fellow-citizen Riccardo Cipriani was the third son of Giuseppe Cipriani, brave patriot, who stopping the flight of the Tuscans at Curtatone (May 29, 1848) prolonged the fight which enabled the Piedmontese to win the battle of Goito. His uncle was Leonetto Cipriani, hero of Ceresara and governor of the Romagna."

With regard to the reference to Cipriani's father, his sister, Carlotta J. Cipriani of Chicago, to whom we are indebted for the letters, gives the following information:

"The signal service rendered by my father and uncle to the cause of Italy, was not, however, performed on the battlefield. They, and not really Cavour, were the originators of the alliance which brought Napoleon III to the aid of Piedmont in 1859 and 'made Italy.' Mrs. Browning, who was remarkably au courant, refers to this fact in her poem 'Summing up in Italy,' in the lines,

'Pepoli, too, and Cipriani
Imperial cousins and cozeners.'

"They had been able to perform this service, because, like the Buonaparte, the Cipriani had lived in Corsica for a number of centuries. Being quite

wealthy and very independent they had, unlike many other Corsicans, never asked any favors from the Napoleons, but had rather been in a position to render them service at different times, a thing that Napoleon III, who seems to have been very grateful, had not forgotten. In 1851 (?), returning from the first London exhibition at the Crystal Palace, my father and uncle took lunch with Napoleon at St. Cloud, on September 23, memorable and unknown date. After this lunch took place the conversation which changed the whole policy of Napoleon toward Piedmont and 'Italy in the Making,' and led to the French armed intervention of 1859."

Though written over two years ago, these letters are of interest as representing the opinion of an intelligent and loyal Italian (and, we may add, of half-German parentage). Our readers will note that the first letter quoted was written in April, 1915, before Italy entered the war.

THE ANGELS AT MONS.

Sir Oliver Lodge is not the only man in old England who believes in supernatural phenomena and ghosts. There are more in the common spheres of life, and this faith has produced a pamphlet which is being circulated in England through the office of the Christian Globe, 185 Fleet Street, London, E. C. It is a little two-pence edition of Pearson's Rationale of the Angel Warriors at Mons, and describes the appearance of angels in the German retreat from Mons and at the battle of the Marne and the Aisne in France. A report and discussion of these phenomena appeared some time ago in the Christian Globe, and according to the author of the pamphlet, John J. Pearson, there can be no doubt of the truth of the stories because they are vouched for by many credible witnesses, including Germans whose testimony consists in complaints that the bodies of dead Germans covering the fields of battle seemed to show no wounds or effect of weapons.

Poor Germany! She not only has to fight the innumerable armies of the Allies, but in addition to all these human enemies there appears a heavenly host, and the good Lord himself sends down a spiritual leader on a white horse commanding the countless squadrons of angels! It is a miracle that Germany still holds out and that in spite of all the Allies have not yet crushed her.

The main attack with which we are dealing here is the battle on the Marne. "Humanly speaking, no earthly power could have arrested the Teutonic flood that swept through Belgium and over northeastern France; and it seemed to those of us who remembered the campaigns of 1870 that history would again repeat itself, and that the whole of northern France and the capital would have quickly succumbed to the might of the German power."

Only the intercession of the heavenly hosts could stop them, and it was "an angelic intervention on behalf of the Allies at and during the retreat from Mons, and in the tremendous conflicts on the Marne and Aisne, whereby the German hosts were hurled back just as it appeared Paris was about to fall into their hands."

Of course there may be infidels who do not believe the stories of the angel warriors, but that view is to be abandoned as Mr. Pearson quotes from the Christian Globe:

"To minds which can admit nothing but what can be explained and demonstrated on mathematical and physical grounds, a consideration of anything

savoring of the supernatural must appear perfectly idle: for while the most acute intellect or the most powerful logic can throw but little light on the subject, it is, at the same time (though I entertain a confident hope that this will not always be the case) equally irreducible within the bounds of science. Meanwhile experience, observation, intuition, and, above all the teachings of the Book of Books, must be our principal, if not, indeed, our only guides. Because in the seventeenth century, credulity outran reason, discretion, and the warranty of Scripture, the eighteenth century, by a natural reaction, sank into the opposite extreme of apathy, to be followed by the censorious criticism and infidelity of the past century, and the blasphemous atheism and contemptuous scorn of to-day. But whoever closely observes the "signs of the times," must be aware that another change is impending, of which the mixed reception of the story of the "Angels at Mons" is highly suggestive. The supercilious scepticism of the past and present age is yielding to a more humble and reverent spirit of inquiry, and there is a large and growing class of well-informed people among the most enlightened and unprejudiced of the present day who are beginning to consider that much which they had been hitherto taught to reject as fabulous has been, in reality, ill- or misunderstood truth."

Further on we read:

"All accounts agree that the Leader of these angelic warriors was mounted on a white horse, and that He and His celestial followers were clad in glistening clothing. It matters not what the names bestowed on this Leader, by the many spectators of these visions-whether St. George by the English, St. Andrew by the Scots, St. Patrick by the Irish, or St. David by the Welsh, St. Denis or Joan d'Arc (who, be it remembered, always affected masculine garb, and for the resumption of which she was burned to death in the marketplace of Rouen, through the machinations of that very Church which has lately canonised her) by the French, St. Michael by the Belgians, or St. Nicholas or General Scobeleff by the Russians-as the various beholders would naturally give Him the name that, from patriotism or religious training, was uppermost in their thoughts at the time."

We are assured that "the number of persons in the British, French, Belgian, and Russian armies who have declared that they were eye-witnesses of these strange and unearthly manifestations, is very great and comprises men of every rank and temperament-from the highly-educated officer down to the humble and often illiterate private."

When one of the ministering nurses, Miss Campbell, doubted such a story, a wounded man sitting near chimed in and said: "It's true, Sister! We all saw it. First there was a sort of yellow mist, sort of rising out before the Germans as they came on to the top of the hill; come on like a solid wall they did-springing out of the earth, just solid; no end of them. I just gave up. It's no use fighting the whole German race, thinks I. It's all up with us! The next minute up comes this funny cloud of light, and when it clears off there's a tall man with yellow hair, in golden armor, on a white horse, holding his sword up, and his mouth open as if he was saying, 'Come on, boys!'.... Then, before you could say 'Knife,' the Germans had turned, and we were after them, fighting like ninety. We had a few scores to settle, Sister, and we fairly settled them."

"One of these stories told to the sister of a gentleman who had generously

given up his house as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, was to the effect that on an occasion when the British were hard pressed, the figure of a gigantic angel with outstretched wings hovered in a luminous cloud between the English and the advancing German lines; and that the latter, paused for an instant, and then retired in confusion. This lady, happening to speak on the subject in the presence of some officers, and in the course of her remarks implying that she discredited the story, was addressed by a colonel with the assurance, "Young lady, the thing really happened. You need not be incredulous. I saw it myself!"

"A similar batch of stories comes from the Eastern theatre of war. Many of the Russian sentinels have stoutly maintained that they have seen Scobeleff, the hero of Plevna, in his conspicuous white uniform and mounted on his famous white charger, galloping in front of their lines and pointing westward. This favorable omen to the cause of Russia is stated only to appear when the armies of the 'Little Father' are in extraordinary straits, and it is confidently believed that the appearance of the ghost of the dashing general always means victory for the Russian armies, and confusion to her enemies." These stories of the white leader are interpreted in the light of Revelations, and the reports of the band of angel warriors are further confirmed by quotations from the Bible showing that similar instances of divine intervention happened to the Israelites in ancient history.

A MINISTER ON WAR.

K

Mr. John Haynes Holmes, minister of the Church of the Messiah in New York City, preached a remarkable sermon to his congregation on April 1, the day before the present special session of Congress was to open. His address has been published in leaflet form by the Free Religious Association and can be had of them (120 Boylston Street, Boston) for ten cents a copy. In anticipation of legislative action which would bring our country into war he felt impelled to express to his people his earnest protest against war in general and his insistence that this war is not an exception. But he made it clear that although he is a pacifist he is none the less a loyal American: "Nothing that America can do can quench my passion for her beauty or divert my loyalty from her service. She is the only country I have, or shall ever have, and I propose that she shall be mine forever, in war or peace, in storm or calm, in evil or good. In this impending crisis with Germany I believe that she is wrong. She seems to me to be faithless to her own supreme calling among the nations of the earth, disloyal to high interests of humanity long since committed to her care, guilty for a selfish motive of a grievous fault." He had nothing but praise for those who differ from him and feel impelled to follow the flag. He said: "I salute the devotion of every man who proposes to sustain it with his money or his blood. But I say to you that when, years hence, the whole of this story has been told, it will be found that we have been tragically deceived, and all our sacrifices have been made in vain." War and democracy are incompatible, Mr. Holmes maintains. "When war comes, democracy goes. England, fighting nobly to conquer Prussianism, is herself in process of being conquered by the Prussian spirit. Already in our own country, before the beginning of war, the dread work of militarism is under way. Already freedom of thought is being denied, and liberty of conscience challenged. Already we are in the midst of such an orgy of bigotry, intolerance and persecution for

opinions' sake, as America has not seen since the days of the Salem witches. The whole fabric of democracy is threatened, the priceless heritage of our fathers in peril of loss. America has never been in such danger as she is today—and the source of the danger is at home and not abroad. Hence my resolve to serve that America which I love so well that I would not have her made over into the likeness of the militarism which she clamors to destroy. I will do what I can to safeguard free thought and free speech, by practising both at any cost. I will do what I can to preserve liberty of conscience, by exercising that liberty without flinching. I will do what I can to guarantee to posterity the democratic ideals and institutions of America, by resisting to the death every assault upon their bulwarks. One such assault is now being made in the movement for universal military training. So long as I have breath to speak, or hand to lift a pen, I will oppose this monstrous thing. By conscription the autocracies of Europe have stood thus long. By conscription this war, perfectly prepared for, inevitably came. By conscription the minds of men are 'cribbed, cabined and confined' to the bounds of that narrow nationalism which is the fiercest foe of brotherhood. By conscription the consciences of men are enslaved to the mastery of those who can command the sinking of the 'Lusitania' and the shooting of Nurse Cavell. By conscription, more effectually than by the attack of German legions, this country can be destroyed, and the fairest experiment of democracy the world has ever seen brought to an untimely end. Therefore will I fight it, and all other devices of militaristic tyranny, and thereby again exalt truly the best interests of my native land.... This struggle, into which now we are about to plunge, cannot go on forever. Some day bugles must sing truce across the fields of battle, tired warriors ground arms, and statesmen sit in guarded council halls to make an end of strife....To discover terms of reconciliation, to work out methods of cooperation, to soften hate and dispel suspicion, to spread abroad sweet influences of confidence and healing-this is a task as beneficent as it is prodigious. Before she herself became a belligerent, this was the task appointed as by the fiat of God for America. But now that she has cast away this sacred charge, it remains for us who cannot take up arms at her behest, to keep it in her stead. How better can we serve our country than by restoring to her, or fulfilling for her, that high mission of peace-making, which is so uniquely and divinely hers!"

MORE PARSEES NEEDED IN WAR-TIME.

BY HESTER D. JENKINS.

This April, 1917, when one of our great patriotic duties is to raise foodstuffs, it is very interesting to study the practical agricultural belief of the Indian Parsees.

"Good thoughts, good words, good deeds," is the Parsee slogan, and in explanation of the "good deeds" we find the following interesting and pertinent explanation in the catechism.

"Q.-What is meant by saying that Ahura-Mazda (God) expects us to promote the growth and development of His creation?"......

"A. For instance, a man promotes the work of growth and development when he brings about the growth of two ears of corn where formerly grew only one. In this way he pleases Ahura-Mazda. Though he may have enough for himself, he must increase the growth of corn so that others can buy it cheaply and readily."