Free War Letters from the Living Dead Man by Elsa Barker Page B

men love one another?” “The same,” I admitted.
    “Truly, I agree with the remote ancestors of these people, from whom they have inherited the saying, ‘This is a strange world.’” “Would you like to approach nearer?” I asked. The stranger hesitated, then said, with a patient smile: “My friend,” glancing at the Beautiful Being, “wishes me to learn something of this star. I will approach nearer.” We descended to perhaps a hundred feet above the lane which separated the enemies. “Look!” exclaimed the stranger. “The souls are leaving their bodies! Is that the purpose of this business, to free souls from bondage?” “Not directly,” I answered. “Each would like to hold the other in bondage; but being unable to do that to any great extent, they take the opposite way.” The stranger looked more confused. “My friend,” explained the Beautiful Being to me, “came from a region where the Law of Opposites does not apply.” “You have never taken me there in our wanderings!” I exclaimed.
    “No, you are so attached to the Law of Opposites.” This was an old jest between me and the Beautiful Being. “Look!” the stranger interrupted me. “There is a soul coming toward us now.” I went forward to greet the newcomer. He was a German officer. “Welcome,” I said, but he seemed not to understand me. The face of his astral body was contorted, as if he had died in pain. Now the Beautiful Being seems to know all the languages of the earth; and though the purity of its nature is such that few on earth can understand it, yet when a soul leaves its body it can understand the speech of the Beautiful Being if there is anything in its nature that responds to the higher vibration which makes the life of that angel so intense and wonderful. “Welcome,” said the Beautiful Being to the soul, in the accents of his native land. “Where am I?” asked the bewildered soul. “You are in the region above the world,” the Beautiful Being answered. “You mean—“ “I mean that your name will be in the list of the dead.”
    “Then it has come!” “Yes.” “But I always feared death.” “You see it is nothing to fear.” “Where is the Kaiser?” “At his headquarters.” “Can I not report to him?” “If you wish.” We moved farther east—slowly, for the newly freed soul had not yet learned that distance is nothing. We found the War Lord seated beside a table looking at a map. His face was drawn and haggard. “There,” I said to the stranger, “is the man who is believed, by the whole world outside his own country, to have caused this vast war.” The stranger (and also the soul) approached and read the thoughts in the brain of the War Lord. I give them as they were, disconnected, tragic in their import:
    “The slaughter of our forces! God punish England! I am the Lord’s chosen! I cannot make a mistake! My generals have blundered. I will degrade—(the name of our newly arrived charge). This defeat is his fault. I ordered him to take those trenches. He has lost our own instead. I cannot make a mistake! I am the Lord’s chosen!” The Beautiful Being turned to the soul who had been a General. “Do you wish to report yourself to the Kaiser?” The eyes he turned to us were sad. “I will not trouble the Kaiser,” he said. A silence had fallen between us. After a little, the Beautiful Being turned to the General again, and its face was soft with pity. “Can I do something for you?” it asked. “Will you take me to my mother, who died of grief for my only brother’s death, in the early days of the war? I am very tired. I want to see my old mother.” The eyes of the rose-veiled stranger were luminous with wonder. “Why, there is even love in this strange star!” it said.
    April 11

Letter 20
    Above the Battlefields
    Picture to yourself a battlefield, a long-stretching irregular double line of men and guns and horses and all the paraphernalia of war. In the old days on earth I once