Faux meat saves the world!
Vegetarian themes turn up in the darndest places. Today I’ve been researching the “Angels of Mons,” which supposedly saved an outnumbered English force from destruction during a World War I battle. That research led me to Arthur Machen’s short story “The Bowmen,” which sparked the legend, and which prominently features a vegetarian restaurant.
In this story, first published in September 1914, about a month after the Battle of Mons, an outnumbered English force faces advancing German forces. Suddenly, one of the English soldiers remembers “a queer vegetarian restaurant in London where he had once or twice eaten eccentric dishes of cutlets made of lentils and nuts that pretended to be steak. On all the plates in this restaurant there was printed a figure of St. George in blue, with the motto, Adsit Anglis Sanctus Geogius - May St. George be a present help to the English. This soldier happened to know Latin and other useless things, and now, as he fired at his man in the grey advancing mass - 300 yards away - he uttered the pious vegetarian motto.”
This “vegetarian motto” summons St. George and a host of ghostly bowmen, who leave 10,000 German soldiers dead, with no wounds upon them. In the conclusion, the very last line of story re-emphasizes the vegetarian theme:
“In Germany, a country ruled by scientific principles, the Great General Staff decided that the contemptible English must have employed shells containing an unknown gas of a poisonous nature, as no wounds were discernible on the bodies of the dead German soldiers. But the man who knew what nuts tasted like when they called themselves steak knew also that St. George had brought his Agincourt Bowmen to help the English.”
This story became wildly popular, and many people began to believe it truth rather than fiction. The bowmen eventually morphed into angels - the Angels of Mons - and the vegetarian theme dropped out. It’s difficult to know what literary significance to attach to this. But we could put a good spin on it: Faux meat (nuts pretending to be steak) saves the British, the British win the war and save the world, therefore …
