Orson Welles' End of the World Broadcast (1938) (Part 2 of 2): The Angels of Mons

Welles during his broadcast.

I must apologize to those wanting only Mars and/or science-fiction material in this blog, but the story of the following incident is profound and is related to the Welles’ broadcast. Furthermore, it is included in the book Mars in the Movies: A History.

In an earlier posting, I focused on Orson Welles’ CBS Mercury Theater on the Air broadcast of an updated radio-specific version of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and of all the havoc in America that the broadcast caused. That particular posting quickly became stuffed with a link to the actual one-hour radio show and two links to complete television recreations of the event, along with a comprehensive bibliography of related books and videos for those who wanted to follow up on the subject.

As a result of its jam-packed nature, I wasn’t able to include this section about a hysterical prequel of sorts that happened 24 years earlier on the further side of the Atlantic Ocean and which proved to be far more consequential in the long run. Yes, as amazing as Orson Welles’ night of Martian terror sounds to our multimedia-inured culture, this wasn’t by a long shot the first time that the purist of fantasies swept through an industrialized nation.

In the autumn of 1914, England entered The Great War (the name of World War I before there was World War II) by declaring war on Germany. At the time, there worked for the London Evening News newspaper a journalist named Arthur Machen, who a few of his contemporaries also knew as a writer of controversial and fantastic horror fantasies. 

Arthur Machen

Machen, as were so many others, was profoundly affected by the war across the English Channel in Europe. As a writer with a regular column for the Evening News, one day shortly after Britain entered the fray, he was inspired to write in his column a very short story—a sort of a prose poem—about his idealized but totally imaginary outcome for the recent Battle of Mons with Englishmen and Frenchmen pitted against a German phalanx of bullet-spitting guns—a veritable war machine. The story was called “The Bowman,” and it appeared on September 29. This “poor linnet of prose,” as Machen called it—clearly a fantasy of the supernatural, not to be taken seriously by anybody—was about the ghostly archers of medieval Agincourt coming to the aid of the surrounded British and French armies. If anyone at the paper bothered to give it a moment’s thought, they would have assumed that the story had quickly been forgotten as all light items in any newspaper are forgotten. But that’s not what happened.

Matters stood thus for eight months until April/May 1915. During those months, pastors all over the nation were using Machen’s piece as inspiration for their sermons. The story spread rapidly and everywhere touched thousands of ordinary people, who accepted it literally—as gospel truth. By April/May, England and its commonwealth nations were all abuzz about the true miracle “of the Angels of Agincourt” or “the Angels of Mons.”

  A contemporary angels illustration typical of the deluge of such figures covering books and articles and postcards of the day. It so happened that millions literally believed in the Angels of Agincourt.

 

Of course, Machen made brave attempts to set the matter right, but he was dismissed and ignored and accused of any number of terrible things because the population of England needed a miracle just then and they would not have it any other way.  Here he describes his predicament in a story:

"I am afraid that many people are wishing by this time that they had never heard my name; again, a considerable number of estimable persons are concerning themselves gloomily enough, from my point of view, with my everlasting welfare. They write me letters, some in kindly remonstrance, begging me not to deprive poor, sick-hearted souls of what little comfort they possess amidst their sorrows. Others send me tracts and pink leaflets with allusions to "the daughter of a well-known canon"; others again are violently and anonymously abusive."

By the time he published a later story, things had gotten much worse: “I know by bitter experience what happens to the man who attempts that task [that which needs correcting]. He is abused in public and vilified in private; every morning for a few months he finds a batch of letters on his desk, some anonymous, some signed, most of them virulent in their indictment. He is accused of theft, of claiming credit that does not belong to him, of forgery, of imposture, of blasphemy. And good little books are written and published to say that he is a very bad man. I have had enough of that I say.” This was the state of affairs for the four long years of the duration of the war.

The quick book version.

Just as the people of England had needed a miracle in 1914 and would not let go of it, in 1938, the U.S. people badly needed a catharsis. No matter that The War of the Worlds radio script and the talented actors effectively destroyed the earth in less than an hour, including the launch and arrival of countless missiles from Mars from some 35 million miles away.

Once again, the scenario was utterly preposterous, clearly a fantasy not to be taken seriously by anybody. In the British instance, the nation was in the midst of a brutal European war, the brunt of which was being waged just a few miles away across the English Channel. In the American equivalent the second European war had not yet begun and indeed was still a year away and was, in any case, across the vast Atlantic ocean, and America’s own entrance into the war was still three years into the future. The major difference was that rather than simmering for months and manifesting itself as hope and joy and a belief in miracles as earnestly proclaimed by pastors and ministers, Welles’ broadcast caused the anxiety in the U.S. public to boil to the surface all in one night in the form of unrelenting fear and panic.

In fact, now that I think about it, this scenario pretty much played out again in November 2016, as an American public, frightened silly by an unending series of Isis terror attacks and school massacres, let their fear rule their decisions in voting booths across the nation. The trouble here is that while in 1938 the next day Americans could laugh at their exaggerated reaction to a mere radio program and then go on with life, the result in 2016 will not nearly be that simple.
 
Further reading:

The Angel of Mons: Phantom Soldiers and Ghostly Guardians by David Clark.

The Strange Case of "The Angels of Mons": Arthur Machen's World War I Story, the Insistent Believers, and His Refutations by Richard J. Bleiler.

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