The New Revelation by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Leaving for a moment the larger argument as to the lines of this / revelation and the broad proofs of its validity, there are some smaller / points which have forced themselves upon my attention during the / consideration of the subject. This home of our dead seems to be very / near to us -- so near that we continually, as they tell us, visit 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.