them in
our sleep. Much of that quiet resignation which we have all observed in
people who have lost those whom they loved--people who would in our
previous opinion have been driven mad by such loss--is due to the fact
that they have seen their dead, and that although the switch-off is
complete and they can recall nothing whatever of the spirit experience
in sleep, the soothing result of it is still carried on by the
subconscious self. The switch-off is, as I say, complete, but
sometimes for some reason it is hung up for a fraction of a second, and
it is at such moments that the dreamer comes back from his dream
"trailing clouds of glory." From this also come all those prophetic
dreams many of which are well attested. I have had a recent personal
experience of one which has not yet perhaps entirely justified itself
but is even now remarkable. Upon April 4th of last year, 1917, I awoke
with a feeling that some communication had been made to me of which I
had only carried back one word which was ringing in my head. That word
was "Piave." To the best of my belief I had never heard the word
before. As it sounded like the name of a place I went into my study
the moment I had dressed and I looked up the index of my Atlas. There
was "Piave" sure enough, and I noted that it was a river in Italy some
forty miles behind the front line, which at that time was victoriously
advancing. I could imagine few more unlikely things than that the war
should roll back to the Piave, and I could not think how any military
event of consequence could arise there, but none the less I was so
impressed that I drew up a statement that some such event would occur
there, and I had it signed by my secretary and witnessed by my wife
with the date, April 4th, attached. It is a matter of history how six
months later the whole Italian line fell back, how it abandoned
successive positions upon rivers, and how it stuck upon this stream
which was said by military critics to be strategically almost
untenable. If nothing more should occur (I write upon February 20th,
1918), the reference to the name has been fully justified, presuming
that some friend in the beyond was forecasting the coming events of the
war. I have still a hope, however, that more was meant, and that some
crowning victory of the Allies at this spot may justify still further
the strange way in which the name was conveyed to my mind.

People may well cry out against this theory of s