"I am too ill to present my request to you in person, but I appeal to your generosity of heart to support it and save this unfortunate woman from death. Have pity on her.
"Brand Whitlock."
All through the day the American Legation sent message after message to the German authorities asking for information. They received none. At 6:20 in the evening they were told by a subordinate that the sentence had not been given—only to learn later that it had indeed been declared, and that Miss Cavell would face a firing squad at two o'clock the following morning. Mr. Whitlock then urged Baron Von der Lancken to appeal to Gen. Von Bissing to mitigate the sentence, and at eleven in the evening he was told that Von Bissing refused to do anything to save Miss Cavell's life.
At the same time that the Governor denied this appeal, Edith Cavell was allowed to see a British chaplain. She told him that she was not in the least afraid of death and willingly gave her life for her country. Her words resembled those of Florence Nightingale that have been quoted elsewhere in this book. Death, she said, was well known to her, and she had seen it so often that it was not strange or fearful to her.
Early in the morning with her eyes bandaged Miss Cavell was led out to face the rifles of the Huns. She wore an English flag over her bosom. Only Germans were witnesses of the execution, but the German chaplain who attended said that she died like a heroine.
When her death became known, the entire civilized world was shocked and horrified. In England this murder did more to stimulate recruiting than anything else up to that time. All day long lines of men waited to sign the papers of enlistment, and in Miss Cavell's home town every eligible man was sworn into the army.
A bitter denunciation of the German act was made by Sir Edward Grey. The Germans themselves had only a poor excuse for what they had done. In brief the case against the German authorities is as follows: they had not previously inflicted the death penalty for the offense of which Miss Cavell was accused; they had kept her in solitary confinement and prevented her from consulting an advocate up to the time of her trial; she was tried with great haste and with great secrecy, and after the trial the sentence was carried out far more speedily than usual. Moreover they had deceived Mr. Whitlock and the other members of the American Legation, and had done so deliberately. After the execution they refused to return the body.
But the name of Edith Cavell has become one of the world's great names and her fame grows brighter as time passes. In the hospital where she was in training for her high calling a fitting memorial to her is being prepared—it is the Edith Cavell Home to be a permanent part of the London Hospital where she served her difficult apprenticeship. But her chief memorial is in the hearts and minds of the British nation.
CHAPTER XXX