Admits aiding English soldiers.
We have no record of that trial; we do not know all that occurred there behind the closed doors of that Senate chamber, where for fourscore years laws based on another and more enlightened principle of justice had been discussed. Miss Cavell did not know, or knew only in the vaguest manner, the offense with which she was charged. She did not deny having received at her hospital English soldiers whom she nursed and to whom she gave money; she did not deny that she knew they were going to try to cross the border into Holland. She even took a patriotic pride in the fact. She was very calm. She was interrogated in German, a language she did not understand, but the questions and responses were translated into French. Her mind was very alert, and she was entirely self-possessed, and frequently rectified any inexact details and statements that were put to her. When, in her interrogatory, she was asked if she had not aided English soldiers left behind after the early battles of the preceding Autumn about Mons and Charleroi, she said yes; they were English and she was English, and she would help her own. The answer seemed to impress the court. They asked her if she had not helped twenty.
"Yes," she said "more than twenty; two hundred."
"English?"
"No, not all English; French and Belgians, too."
But the French and Belgians were not of her own nationality, said the judge—and that made a serious difference. She was subjected to a nagging interrogatory. One of the judges said that she had been foolish to aid the English because, he said, the English are ungrateful.
"No," replied Miss Cavell, "the English are not ungrateful."
"How do you know they are not?" asked the inquisitor.
Miss Cavell makes a fatal admission.
"Because," she answered, "some of them have written to me from England to thank me."