Miss Bertha Bennet Burleigh relates that she spent a pleasant half-hour with Miss Cavell, whom she met by chance shortly after the German occupation. In conversation the lady journalist learned that the nurses in the various nursing institutions had been requested to give an undertaking that they would also act as guards of the wounded. Miss Cavell said, 'We are prepared to do all we can to help them to recover from their wounds, but to be their jailers, never!' A German general smote the table with his clenched fist when the nurse gave her emphatic reply, but he could not cow her indomitable will. 'He looked,' Sister Edith afterwards told one of her colleagues, 'as if he would like to shoot me dead.' From that day onwards the German authorities commenced to deal harshly with the British Red Cross nurses who were in their power.
There is evidence available to prove that many Germans had occasion to bless the good offices of Nurse Cavell; and from all who passed through her hands she won the most profound esteem, which in itself was a cause of offence to the German authorities, who knew that they themselves were just as cordially detested.
But Edith Cavell's greatest offence lay in the fact that she was an Englishwoman, heroic daughter of the race that no specious promise or bribe could tempt from the path of honour; that could not view its treaty signature as a 'scrap of paper,' whose 'contemptible little army' had played a dramatic part in hurling back the Germans when Paris was literally in their mailed grasp; and that had succeeded in locking the once weak line of the Allies, which now forbade approach to the Channel ports of France from which a royal bully had proposed to attack the shores of England.
Baron von Bissing had been appointed Governor-General of Belgium, and forthwith he had commenced to terrorize the inhabitants. Brussels was plastered with proclamations calculated to make life scarcely worth living. One of them in particular forbade any person to assist subjects of countries at war with Germany to leave Belgium.
It is not quite certain whether Baron von Bissing ever came in personal contact with Miss Cavell, but it is positive that she became suspect to some of his emissaries, who promptly set about weaving a web for her undoing. It did not take long for clever German spies to ascertain that the English nurse had supplied British, French, and Belgian refugees with food, clothing, and money, and had connived, if not actually assisted, in their escape across the frontier into Holland.
No purpose would be served by attempting to deny that there was in existence a Band of Mercy whose object it was to smuggle fugitives out of Belgium. The members of this secret organization included Prince Reginald and Princess Marie de Croy of Belignies, the Comtesse de Belleville, a French abbé, Mademoiselle Thulier, M. Philippe Bancq, a Belgian architect, and others. It may be stated that the Princess is partly of English extraction, and her arrest caused the death of her English grandmother as a result of shock and subsequent illness. The Comtesse de Belleville belongs to the French nobility through her father, while her mother, the Vicomtesse d'Hendecourt, is Belgian. She spent much of her time in Belgium, devoting herself largely to charitable work, and when war broke out she came to the aid of her distressed compatriots.
Nurse Cavell undoubtedly participated in these simple acts of humanity which the Germans construed into 'crimes.' She permitted her hospital to be used in the chain of rest-houses by means of which fugitives escaped detection and capture, as they were passed from point to point towards their golden enfranchisement across the Dutch frontier. Admittedly Miss Cavell did wrong in setting the German military law at defiance, but it was the policy of German 'frightfulness' that was her justification. The enemy army violated their own treaty obligations, and had plundered, burnt, slaughtered, and ravished a helpless people in a manner that had not been conceivable in this twentieth century. Edith Cavell's contact with wounded soldiers had afforded her first-hand information concerning the brutal atrocities of which the invaders were guilty, and doubtless gave rise to a passionate desire to enable any wounded British compatriot, Belgian or French friend, to escape from the common peril.
For nearly a whole year Nurse Cavell continued her work, one supreme and unbroken test of the heroic spirit with which she was imbued. It was wonderful that her God-given befriending of refugees should have escaped detection so long; but at length the German Administration in Belgium verified some of the escapes of men from their iron thrall, and Edith Cavell was wrenched from her hospital by soldiers and put in prison.