Edith Cavell was so brave, so frank, so honest that it would seem that even to the Germans her virtues would
plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of her taking-off.
But not so, for German education and training have evidently made the German people look upon almost everything in a way different from that of Americans, Englishmen, and Frenchmen. And yet the common German people do at times show that they have a feeling of admiration, if not of affection, for peoples of other nations; for we are told of a German city erecting a statue to the French and English soldiers who died as captives in the German prison located there, with the inscription, To our Comrades, who here died for their Fatherland.
But we must remember that there are many kingdoms in Germany and cruel Prussia rules them all. It was Prussian savagery and barbarity that approved the massacre by the Turks of almost an entire people, the Armenians, and it was done under the eyes of German officers. The same is true of the wholesale slaughter of non-combatant Serbian men, women, and children by the Bulgarians. A word from Germany would have stopped it all.
When the war broke out, Edith Cavell was living in England with her aged mother. She felt her duty was in Belgium and she went to Brussels and established a private hospital. An American woman, Mary Boyle O'Reilly of Boston, a daughter of the poet, John Boyle O'Reilly, worked with her for a time. When Miss O'Reilly was expelled from Belgium, she begged Miss Cavell to leave that land of horror, but Miss Cavell only said, "My duty is here."
She and her nurses cared for many a wounded German soldier and this alone should have insured her fair treatment, if not gratitude, from Germany.
She was arrested, kept in solitary confinement for ten weeks without any charge being made against her; then was tried secretly for having sheltered French and Belgian soldiers who were seeking to escape to Holland.
It is probably true that Miss Cavell did this, but the history of war in modern times records no case where any one has been put to death for giving shelter for a short time to a fugitive soldier. Such an act does not, according to the custom of civilized countries, make one a spy, nor is it treason.
Those who have investigated the case carefully have come to the conclusion that the Germans decided to make a terrible example of some of the women in Brussels who were sympathizing with and perhaps helping French and Belgian soldiers to escape to Holland, for about the same time twenty-two other women were arrested on the same charge as that finally made against Edith Cavell.
When Brand Whitlock, the American minister, learned from an outsider (he could get no information from the German officials) that Edith Cavell had been condemned, he sent the following letters, one a personal one, the other an official one, to the German commandant: