"It is then with confidence, and in the hope of its favourable reception, that I have the honour to present to your Excellency my request for pardon on Miss Cavell's behalf."
This note was read aloud to Baron von der Lancken, the very official who had refused to answer the first communication of the Legation with reference to the matter, and he
"expressed disbelief in the report that sentence had actually been passed and manifested some surprise that we should give credence to any report not emanating from official sources. He was quite insistent in knowing the exact source of our information, but this I did not feel at liberty to communicate to him."
Baron von der Lancken proceeded to express his belief "that it was quite improbable that sentence had been pronounced," and that in any event no execution would follow. After some hesitation he telephoned to the Presiding Judge of the Court-Martial and then reported that the embassy's unofficial information was only too true.
His attention was further called to the express promise of the German Director of the Political Department to inform the American Legation of the sentence, and he was asked to grant the American Government the courtesy of a "delay in carrying out the sentence."
To this appeal for mercy Baron von der Lancken replied that the Military Governor (von Bissing) was the supreme authority and that he "had discretionary power to accept or to refuse acceptance of an appeal for clemency." He thereupon left the representative of the American Legation and apparently called upon von Bissing, and after half an hour he returned with the statement that not only would von Bissing decline to revoke the sentence of death, but "that in view of the circumstances of this case, he must decline to accept your plea for clemency or any representation in regard to the matter."
Thereupon Baron von der Lancken insisted that Mr. Brand Whitlock's representative (Mr. Hugh Gibson, Secretary of the Legation) should take back the formal appeal for clemency addressed both to him and to von Bissing, and as both German officials had been fully advised as to the nature of the plea, Mr. Gibson finally consented. Baron von der Lancken assured Mr. Gibson that under the circumstances "even the Emperor himself could not intervene," a statement that was very quickly refuted when the Emperor—aroused by the world-wide condemnation of Miss Cavell's execution—did commute the sentences imposed upon six of the seven persons who were condemned to death with Miss Cavell.
During the earnest conversation which took place in this last attempt to save Miss Cavell's life, the American representative took occasion to remind Baron von der Lancken's official associates—although it should not have been necessary—of the great services rendered by the United States, and especially by Mr. Brand Whitlock, in the earlier period of the German occupation, and this was urged as a reason why as a matter of courtesy to the United States Government some more courteous consideration should be accorded to its request. At the outbreak of the war, thousands of German residents in Belgium returned to their country in such haste that they left their families behind them. Mr. Whitlock gathered these women and children—numbering, it is said, over 10,000—and provided them with the necessaries of life, and ultimately with safe transportation into Germany, and having thus placed this inestimable service to thousands of German civilians in one scale, the American representative simply asked, as "the only request" made by the United States upon grounds of reciprocal generosity, that some clemency should be given to Miss Cavell. The refusal to give this clemency or even to accept in a formal way the plea for clemency, is one of the blackest cases of ingratitude in the history of diplomacy.
On October 22nd there was issued from Brussels a "semi-official" but anonymous statement, charging that in the reports of the Secretary of the American Embassy, from which the above quoted statements are mainly taken, "most of the important events are inaccurately reproduced."
No specification of any inaccuracy is however made, except the general denial "that the German authorities with empty promises put off the American Minister" and also the equally general statement that no promise was given to our embassy to advise it of developments in the case.