"Let none these marks efface,
For they appeal from tyranny to God."
In the last interview between our representative and Baron von der Lancken, which took place a few hours before the execution, our representative reminded these Prussian officials
"of our untiring efforts on behalf of German subjects at the outbreak of the war and during the siege of Antwerp. I pointed out that, while our services had been gladly rendered and without any thought of future favors, they should certainly entitle you to some consideration for the only request of this sort you [the American Minister] had made since the beginning of the war."
Even our Minister's appeal to gratitude and to one of the most ordinary and natural courtesies of diplomatic life proved unavailing, and at midnight the Secretary of the American Legation and the Spanish Minister, who was acting with him, left in despair. At 2 o'clock that morning Miss Cavell was secretly executed.
Even the ordinary courtesy accorded to the vilest criminal, of being permitted before dying to have a clergyman of her own selection, was denied her until a few hours before her death, for the legal counselor of the American Legation on October 10th applied in behalf of this country for permission for an English clergyman to see Miss Cavell, and this, too, was refused, as her jailers preferred to assign her the prison chaplains as well as her counsel. Even the final appeal of our Minister for the surrender of her mutilated body was denied, on the ground that only the Minister of War in Berlin could grant it.
Apart from the brutality of the whole incident there is one circumstance that makes it of peculiar interest to the American people and which gives to it the character of rank ingratitude. Our representative, as above stated, did advise the German officials that a little delay was asked by our Legation as a slight return for the innumerable acts of kindness which our Legation had done for German soldiers and interned prisoners in the earlier days of the war before the German invasion had swept over the land. The charge of ingratitude may rest soundly upon far greater and broader grounds.
This great nation had contributed in money and merchandise a sum estimated at many millions for the relief of the people in Belgium. In so doing it did to the German nation an inestimable service, for when Germany conquered Belgium the duty and burden rested upon it to support its population to the extent that it might become necessary. The burden of supporting 8,000,000 civilians was no light one, especially as there existed in Germany a scarcity of food. As bread tickets were then being issued in Germany to its people, the supplies would have been substantially less if a portion of its food products had been required for the civilian population of Belgium, for obviously the German nation could not permit a people, whom it had so ruthlessly trampled under foot, to starve to death. Every dollar that was raised in America for the Belgian people, therefore, operated to relieve Germany from a heavy burden.
Moreover, when the war broke out, Germany needed some friendly nation to take over the care of its nationals in the hostile countries, and in England, France, Belgium, and Russia the interests of German citizens were assumed by the American Government as a courtesy to Germany, and no one can question how faithfully in the last fourteen months Page in London, Sharp in Paris, and Whitlock in Brussels have labored to alleviate the inevitable suffering to German prisoners or interned civilians.
In view of these services, it surely was not much for the American Minister to ask that a little delay should be granted to a woman whose error, if any, had arisen from impulses of humanity and from considerations of patriotism. To spare her life a little longer could not have done the German cause any possible harm, for she was in their custody and beyond the power of rendering any help to her compatriots. To condemn any human being, even if he were the vilest criminal, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and execute him at 2 a.m., was an act of barbarism for which no possible condemnation is adequate.
Under these circumstances, it would be incredible, if the facts were not beyond dispute, that the request of the United States for a little delay was not only brutally refused, but that our Legation was deliberately misled and deceived until the death sentence had been inflicted.