Having said so much, is it open to us, amid all the mental anguish and suffering which this terrible war has engendered, without profaning the sorrow of our fellow-men and women, to give to those who are in mortal fear as to the fate of some one whom they love the hope of finding, among those extrahuman phenomena which have been unjustly and falsely disparaged, a consoling gleam of light that shall not be a mere mockery or delusion?  I venture to declare—­and I am doing so not thoughtlessly, but after studying the problem with the conscientious attention which it demands and after personally making a number of experiments or causing them to be made under my supervision—­I venture to declare, without for a moment losing sight of the respect due to grief, that we possess here, in these indisputable cases where no normal mode of communication is possible, a strange but real and serious source of information and comfort.  I could mention a large number of tests that have been made, so to speak, before my eyes by absolutely trustworthy relatives or friends.

As my space is limited, I will relate only one, which typifies and summarizes all the others very fairly.  A mother had three sons at the front.  She was hearing pretty regularly from the eldest and the second; but for some weeks the youngest, who was in the Belgian trenches, where the fighting was very fierce, had given no sign of life.  Wild with anxiety, she was already mourning him as dead when her friends advised her to consult Mme. M. The medium consoled her with the first words that she spoke and told her that she saw her son wounded, but in no danger whatever, that he was in a sort of shed fitted up as a hospital, that he was being very well looked after by people who spoke a different language, that for the time being he was unable to write, which was a great worry to him, but that she would receive a letter from him in a few days.  The mother did, in fact, receive a card from this son a few days later, worded a little stiffly and curtly and written in an unnatural hand, telling her that all was well and that he was in good health.  Greatly relieved, she dismissed the matter from her mind, merely said to herself that of course the medium, like all mediums, had been wrong and thought no more of it.  But two or three messages following on the first, all couched in short, stilted phrases that seemed to be hiding something, ended by alarming her so much that she was unable to bear the strain any longer and entreated her son to tell her the whole truth, whatever it might be.  He then admitted that he had been wounded, though not seriously, adding that he was in a sort of shed fitted up as a hospital, where he was being capitally looked after by English doctors and nurses, in short, just as the medium had seen him.

I repeat, mediumistic experience can show other instances of this kind.  If it stood alone, it would be valueless, for it might well be explained by mere coincidence.  But it forms part of a very normal series; and I could easily enumerate many others within my own knowledge.  This, however, would merely mean repeating, with uninteresting variations, the essential features of the present case, a proceeding for which there would be no excuse save in a technical work.