War Letters from the Living Dead Man by Elsa Barker Page A

war trumpet is an instrument that can rouse the demon that sleeps in the human breast. He says that the demonic forces outside can make their entry into our world and our personalities riding on the tones of the trumpet-horn. He is right. He says that it brings the element of fire into the soul. Profoundly true! Fire, the element of destruction, that purifies by destroying what cannot resist it. Fire in the soul and fire in the nerves and fire at the end of a rifle—and death by fire to all that gets in its way!
    I have listened for days to the ear-splitting noise by which Germany seeks to put hell into the hearts of her soldiers. My ears rang with it yesterday. Why do you start? Have you not yet accustomed yourself to the thought that I can go back and forth, from the hell of Europe to the purgatory of New York? Yes, the Germans in New York are in purgatory, for they know that their cause is lost. Purgatory is for purgation. Let us hope that it may accomplish its purpose in their hearts. And I do not say this to be unkind, but rather as a blessing. I love the Germans, and all other races. So also do you—in your heart of hearts. Yes, it was I who, through an easy instrument, directed you to the German doctor. I wanted you to see how good a German can be. There are many such in that hell-racked nation.
    You should understand that hell comes into a man—he does not go into hell. Have you not heard that man is the Microcosm of the Macrocosm? Those tired grey-green soldiers that I watched in their march through Brussels were each of them large enough to contain hell and heaven and a world of spirits. All of them had contained heaven many a time, when listening to the strains of their master musicians. It was when the war trumpet sounded, and the war-hate and the war-lust awoke in them, that they contained hell. Many a time have I clutched with my too-tenuous hands a German soldier who was about to disgrace himself. Once, at Namur, I kept a young man from doing something that would have darkened his judgment of himself while his life lasted—and it lasted only twenty-one days thereafter. He was a good boy; but the devil awoke in him as it awoke in others. It was because he was more sensitive than some others that I could make him feel my restraining hands. He thought they were the hands of his dead grandfather, who had left him only a year before. What matter? He let his victim escape. (Yes, look up Namur on the map, if you wish to! You will find it in the right place. Your uncertainty as to Belgian geography does not trouble me; but your return to the world of your own thoughts has broken the thread of mine.)

Letter 16
    The Sixth Race
    Have you thought about the United States after this war? A new race is being prepared for in the United States. That is why you had to be born there—you through whom I write. That is why I am trying to use you in my work for Universal Brotherhood. No; you need not remain in the United States. It is better that you should continue to mingle with other races in their old habitations. The Theosophical Society could not have been born anywhere else. Spiritualism could not have been born anywhere else. In the United States is a readiness for new things, a reaching out for the untried, a welcome for things because they are new. Of course this tendency may be and is abused. Almost any faker can find followers in the United States; but without that hospitable spirit towards the New, the great new race could not come into existence there.
    This race is not made of new souls, but of the oldest and most experienced souls, experienced in other lives of the past. The ingenuousness and the childlike quality of Americans are the results of spiritual maturity. The race, as a race, is in its youth; but the souls are old as time. After they have taken a much needed rest, many or most of the souls that go out by death in this war will find rebirth in the United States. Oh, that land will be a very wonderful