"Then it fell out in the sacring of the Mass that right as the priest heaved up the Host there came a beam redder than any rose and smote upon it, and then it was changed bodily into the shape and fashion of a Child having his arms stretched forth, as he had been nailed upon the Tree." -Old Romance.
You can support me on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/sststr
Nothing like a good bit of war propaganda!
From the annotations:
First appearance in "The Angels of Mons" (1915). The Monstrance is a receptacle for the Eucharistic host, or alternatively for the display of relics.
sacring: consecration of the bread and wine during Mass
enfiladed: subjected to gunfire along their entire line
cannonade: continuous cannon fire
the Crystal Palace in the old days: from 1865 to 1936 - with a hiatus during the 1910s - the Brock's fireworks company put on annual displays ("Brock's benefits") at the Crystal Palace site. Interestingly, in the 1920s the phrase "Brock's benefits" would begin to be used to describe artillery battles in the Great War.
gehenna-fire: hellfire
tinnitus: ringing in the ears
St. Lambert on that terrible day: widespread reports of what came to be knows as "the German atrocities", both real and inflated in Allied propaganda, followed in the wake of the German invasion of Belgium and France. Machen, inventing his own war atrocity, has out-Heroded Herod.
Ave Maria Stella: more likely the medieval plainsong hymn to Mary, "Ave Maris Stella", "Hail Star of the Sea".
The picture used is "Village de Saint-Lambert." by Entomolo, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en).
This wouldn't be the actual village of St. Lambert referenced in the story, if such a place even exists at all. While the village pictured is in northern France, it is much too far west for the Germans to have ever made it to in WW1, but it does look very typical of French villages, so gives a good feels for setting.
To follow along: https://web.archive.org/web/20120414102255/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/machen/arthur/angels-of-mons/chapter3.html
