A Noble Woman Part 6

'The work of the statesman pa.s.ses. New generations arise, with new problems and new combinations. The victories of the general are forgotten or live in the musty pages of history with dates and sententious comments of the historian. But glorious deeds of sacrifice never die. They live and grow mightier as years roll on.

'The old English chronicler, Hall, after discussing the question whether Joan of Arc was justly killed or no, adds this comment--that "it matters not, for in a few years the whole story will be forgotten." Poor fool! He forgot that good deeds live, and therefore can never be forgotten. So we shall tell the story of Edith Cavell to the wondering children, and they on their knees will lisp in childish words a prayer that they may grow like such a holy woman.

'And the ages that are to come will learn her name. Yes, long after other great actors in this awful tragedy are forgotten--when the names of kings and kaisers are lost in the obscurity of the past--the sacrifice made by Edith Cavell will be remembered as we remember the holy deeds of saints and the martyrdom of the Christian virgins.

'This foul world needs some saint to save it.

'The world that tells lies, breaks sworn treaties, murders and kills, needs a ransom. Vile as it is, so vile that those who look on it marvel at the depravity of human nature, and now, as a sin-offering, a woman has been offered by the blood-l.u.s.ting Germans.

'The sacrifice will surely tell in the great world beyond, and a blessing will come from her death.

'The heavenly trumpets sound the victory. Fear and cruelty shall not prevail. Honour, love, and sacrifice are conquerors. And this world will be saved from that combination of human power and vileness which is revealed to the world by the Prussian military system.

'Edith Cavell, by her sacrifice, pleads with G.o.d to send righteousness again on this war-torn earth.

'She will conquer.'

Mr. T. P. O'Connor delivered more than one eloquent speech, and that which we quote may be accepted as the voice of Ireland:

'If ever we had any doubts as to what our duty is in this War, it must have been removed by the events of the past few days. We have given to this cause of liberty one of the n.o.blest figures that ever appeared in the martyrology of liberty throughout the history of the world.

'I like to think of Miss Cavell as a symbol of our race. By her devotion to duty, her a.s.siduity in her work, her determination to stand by her post, her humanity to the enemy as well as to the friend, her words of courage, and at the same time of broad pity and humanity, even under the shadow of death, that woman has done more to inspire our race in our fight than the gallantry even of a hundred thousand men.

'I am glad to see that a great newspaper has opened a fund for the purpose of raising an adequate monument to her memory; but no monument of marble or of bronze will speak as her own personality, her own life, and her death.'

The following is extracted from a powerful article by Professor J. H.

Morgan in the _Graphic_:

'The execution of Miss Cavell is not, perhaps, the most revolting of the innumerable outrages committed by the German army, but it is certainly the most callous and the most authoritative. Hundreds of women and young girls have been outraged by German officers and men; many have been shot, and others burnt alive. But what distinguishes the case of Miss Cavell--not forgetting the singular n.o.bility of her character--from these obscurer tragedies is the fact that, owing to the presence of the vigilant and high-minded Minister of a neutral State, the veil has been lifted upon the whole proceedings, from their inception to their mournful conclusion in the courtyard of the prison of St. Gilles, and the world has had revealed to it in the most lurid light the sinister character of German "justice."

'The n.o.ble woman who, out of the abundance of her charity, sought to save men from these things has been condemned and executed on a charge of having offended against military law. I know nothing more tragically ironical than that the Power which has broken all laws, human and divine, should seek to justify the condemnation of Edith Cavell with all the pomp of a tribunal of justice. While thousands of ravishers and spoilers go free, one woman who had spent her life in ministries to such as were sick and afflicted is handed over to the executioner. Truly there has been no such trial since Barabbas was released and Christ led forth to the hill of Calvary.'

Mr. G. K. Chesterton contributed a scathing indictment to the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_:

'There is not much that can be said, or said easily, about the highest aspects of the murder of Edith Cavell. When we have said, "Dear in the sight of G.o.d is the death of His saints," we have said as much as mere literature has ever been able to say in the matter.

'The thing was not done to protect the Prussian power. It was done to satisfy a Prussian appet.i.te. The mad disproportion between the possible need of restraining their enemy and the frantic needlessness of killing her is simply the measure of the distance by which the distorted Prussian psychology has departed from the moral instincts of mankind. The key to the Prussian is in this extraordinary fact: that he does truly and in his heart believe that he is _admired_ whenever he can manage to be dreaded. An indefensible act of public violence is to him what a poem is to a poet or a song to a bird. It at once relieves and expresses him; he feels more himself while he is doing it. His whole conception of the State is a series of such _coups d'etat_. In Poland, in Alsace, in Lorraine, in the Danish provinces, he has wholly failed to govern; indeed, he has never really attempted to govern. For governing means making people at home.

'Wherever he goes, and whatever success he gains, he will always make it an occasion for sanguinary pantomimes of this kind. And awful as is the individual loss, it is well that now, at the very moment when men, wily or weak, are beginning to talk of conciliatory possibilities in this incurable criminal, he should himself have provided us with this appalling reply.'

Mr. Hall Caine attended the great Memorial Service in St. Paul's Cathedral; and below is a short extract from his impressions as recorded in the _Daily Telegraph_:

'What has brought this mult.i.tude together? A great victory? The close of a great campaign? The funeral (as at this time last year) of a grand old warrior who, after many glorious victories, has died, as is most fit, within sound of the guns in the War he foretold, and is being borne to his lasting place amid the acclamations of his countrymen and the homage of the world? No, but the memory of a poor woman, a hospital nurse, who has been foully done to death by a barbarous enemy, condemned for acts of mercy and humanity, tried in secret, shot in haste, and then buried in a traitor's grave!

'What a triumph for religion, for Christianity, for the Church!

What an answer to Nietzsche! What a rebuke to Treitschke! What a smashing blow to the all-wise philosophers who have been telling us that Corsica has conquered Galilee! That in these dark and evil days the people of London should a.s.semble in tens of thousands to thank G.o.d for the shadow of the scaffold and to find inspiration in thinking of the martyr's end is proof enough that not l.u.s.t of empire, not "the will to power," not war for its own sake or for the triumphs it brings in its train, but religion, with its righteousness, is still the bread of our souls.'

XIII

THE LASH OF THE WORLD'S PRESS

SELECTIONS FROM BRITISH JOURNALS

_The Times._

'The ordinary German mind is doubtless incapable of understanding the "horror and disgust" which the military execution of Miss Cavell will arouse throughout the civilized world. We shall be surprised if within the next few days the press of all neutral lands does not re-echo these feelings with an intensity which will astonish the disciples of "Kultur." Here we have in its highest development that boasted product of the Teutonic intelligence and the Teutonic heart. The very spirit of Zabern, but of Zabern in war-time, broods over the whole brutal and stupid story. There is not in Europe, outside Germany and her Allies, a man who can read it without the deepest emotions of pity and of shame. The victim was a lady who had devoted her life to the n.o.blest and the most womanly work woman can do. She was the head of a great nursing inst.i.tute which has trained numbers of nurses for Germany as well as for Belgium. She herself nursed many wounded Germans at the beginning of the War. She has been sentenced to death by their officers, and shot by their comrades. So is it that the Germans requite the charity of strangers. She had been guilty of a military offence--the offence of harbouring her own wounded countrymen and Belgians amongst whom she had lived and worked, and of getting them across the Dutch frontier. That was enough for the uniformed pedants who tried her, and for their civilian subordinates. She was perfectly straightforward and truthful with the court. They sent her to her death upon her own admissions. They could not, even by their own harsh law, have convicted her without these admissions.

Her frankness did not profit her any more than did her s.e.x, her calling, or her services to the Kaiser's wounded troops. There was the fact: she acknowledged certain acts which could be twisted into "conveying soldiers to the enemy," and the legal penalty for this offence under the German military code is death. That was enough for her judges. They sentenced her on a Monday afternoon, and had her shot in the dark at two o'clock next morning. Napoleon ordered a similar "execution" in the ditch of Vincennes. It cost him and his Empire dear.

'There is not much more to tell. The Councillor to the American Legation was refused permission to visit the prisoner after sentence, and a like refusal was at first given to the English clergyman, Mr. Gahan. This last refusal, worthy of the Jacobins who refused a confessor to Marie Antoinette, was, however, not persisted in, and the doomed Englishwoman had the consolations of her own Church, and received the Holy Communion from Mr. Gahan's hands. He found her "admirably strong and calm." She admitted again her guilt according to German military law, but a.s.sured him that "she was happy to die for her country." Her country with one voice acknowledges the claim. She did in very truth die for England, and England will not lightly forget her death. That she had committed a technical offence is undeniable; but so did Andreas Hofer and other victims of Napoleonic tyranny whose doom patriotic Germans never cease to execrate. We do not know whether the hide-bound brutality of the military authorities or the lying trickery of the civilians is the more repulsive. Both were determined that Miss Cavell should die, and they conspired together to shoot her before an appeal could be lodged. They have killed the English nurse, as Napoleon killed the Duc D'Enghien, and by killing her they have immeasurably deepened the stain of infamy that degrades them in the eyes of the whole world. They could have done no deed better calculated to serve the British cause.'

_The Morning Post._

'Often as in the course of the past fifteen months we have been astounded by the relapses into elemental barbarism which our adversaries have exhibited, perhaps there is no case that shows up so much as this the ghastly descent of the German character into primitive brutality. When it is admitted that the charge was proved true, by the accused's confessions, and that it was a charge that, according to the military code in force at Brussels, might be visited with the penalty of death, all is said that can be said for the real criminals. A proclamation of martial law usually invests the military authority with the power of inflicting the severest penalties over a wide range of offences. This does not mean that that authority is to deal in nothing but death sentences. But it is quite useless to look for any colourable pretext for German remorselessness in this matter. They were resolved from the first to commit this deed of cruelty, but they were feverishly anxious that it should be kept secret until beyond recall. From the moment that the American Legation was known to have got news of Miss Cavell's arrest and to be concerned in seeing that she was properly defended, the German local Government begins to adopt every means for throwing dust in the eyes of the United States representatives.

Surely such a story has never been presented to the modern world as is here unfolded.

'All who have given attention to Napoleonic literature must have recollections of prints of the death of the Duc D'Enghien--the firing party under the glare of the torches, the prisoner standing on the brink of his newly dug grave. In Napoleon's lifetime, and for many years after, nothing hurt his personal reputation more than this summary, furtive execution in the dead of night that seemed to proclaim its own blood-guiltiness. But the great Frenchman acted in this matter with the motives and in the manner of an Eastern Sultan. He saw a man whom, rightly or wrongly, he believed to be a danger to himself; he arrested him lawlessly on foreign soil, and struck him down lawlessly. But what is there in common between such an episode and the midnight execution of a defenceless woman who never meant harm to any human being, who only came within reach of the criminal law by her superior regard for the higher precepts of mercy and compa.s.sion?

'When we think of the scene in that Brussels jail we may well wonder that at this time of day it should be possible to get men to partic.i.p.ate in such a deed. Is it that insufficient blood has been shed during this past year that men should hunger after one harmless life? Yet we should evidently make a great mistake to treat our heroic countrywoman's end as if a mere case for compa.s.sion.

'One cannot mourn beyond a certain point for such a death. Who could have dreamed a few years ago that English womanhood would be producing such a heroine--the counterpart and realization in actual life of the Antigone whom the tragedian's inspired imagination has held up to the world's admiration for so many centuries?'

_The Daily Telegraph._

'We do not know whether any comment would be adequate in a case like this, or whether, indeed, all comment is not superfluous. We have had large experience of the brutality with which the enemy conducts his warfare, and especially the inhuman recklessness with which he pursues his vengeance against the civilian population of the countries which he invades. We venture to think, however, that in the case of a nurse, a woman whose life is dedicated to the alleviation of pain, cruelty of this kind, cruelty that presses against her the very extremity of martial law, is more diabolical even than all the other counts of a growing indictment. No other nation in Europe, we believe, would have put a nurse to death in circ.u.mstances of this kind. They would have made some allowance for her woman's tender heart, even though she had been guilty of an offence, and therefore deserved some punishment. Nothing, probably, can now brand with fouler infamy the German name, stained as it is by all the d.a.m.ning items in its past record, from Louvain and the _Lusitania_ down to the murder of an English nurse.'

_The Standard._

'Those who sorrow for the death of a good and brave Englishwoman who died for her country as truly and n.o.bly as any soldier in the field must most warmly acknowledge the efforts made on her behalf by the Ministers of the United States and of Spain. Everything which could be done by gentlemen of kindly spirit and resolution to save her was done. We are once more under a debt of unbounded grat.i.tude to those neutrals who have, from the first, striven to maintain some of the mitigations of the horrors of warfare which our enemy thrusts aside with contempt. They strained their diplomatic prerogatives to the utmost in the cause of mercy, and, if all their efforts were unavailing to combat the logical savagery of the German military mind, the fault was none of theirs. We must add also that, despite the horror at the outrage which they cannot conceal, the representatives of the United States who have reported are perfectly fair to the Germans. Although their own proposals for the defence of Miss Cavell were rejected, they do not deny that her trial was, in a sense, fair, and that the issue was in accordance with the evidence and the provisions of the German military code.

The correspondence of Mr. Brand Whitlock with Mr. Page, and the doc.u.ments he forwards, gain the greater cogency from their frank avowal of that fact. Murder by process of law is, of course, no rare thing. Judge Jeffreys was a murderer of that kind. But it has always aroused greater anger and contempt among men of right feeling than murder of any other kind, and those, we are sure, will be the feelings aroused throughout the world by the story of the murder of this n.o.ble woman, who, if she offended against the laws of her country's foes, could have been so easily rendered harmless by means far less severe. The vengeance of the strong upon the weak is the most abhorrent spectacle in the eyes of all right-minded people which can be exhibited.

'It would be easy to pour forth vials of denunciation on the heads of the Germans for this act. But it is utterly useless to do so, and, if useless, then weak. A homely proverb says that you can expect nothing from a pig but a grunt, and we know by this time what to expect from our present enemy. Their standard of justice, of manliness, of chivalry, is altogether diverse from ours, and atrocities such as this done on Miss Cavell must simply confirm us in our determination that it is our standard and not theirs which is going to prevail in the world of the future. As one outrage follows another the conviction grows the stronger that the world on the Prussian model would be an intolerable place, and that every man who loves freedom, mercy, and justice had better die than live to see it so. The correspondence must be read in full. We shall not attempt to discuss it in detail. In due course, as we most fully believe, the blood of all those who have perished to slake the brutal German thirst for dominion will be required at the hands of the guilty. On the other hand, the name of Edith Cavell is henceforth enshrined among the patriots and martyrs who have died n.o.bly for the honour of the Empire. May her relatives and friends find comfort in that thought!'

_The Daily Mail._

'The story of Miss Cavell's arrest, trial, and martyrdom is one of those sublime tragedies which make the deepest appeal to the heart of man. The facts cover the enemy with eternal infamy. The Germans did to death a woman whose whole life had been dedicated to the service of suffering man, for a breach of a barbarous law which they themselves had imposed. All efforts to save her were in vain.

The German authorities tricked and attempted to deceive the United States Minister at Brussels, who made the most persistent exertions in her behalf. They evidently hurried on the execution in order that no chance might baulk them of their prey. This is a deed which in its horror and wicked purposelessness stuns the world and cries to heaven for vengeance.

'Miss Cavell neither grieved nor faltered when she knew her fate.

She was happy, she said, to die for her country; and a life which had been generously devoted to a n.o.ble work was crowned by an heroic death. It is difficult to say what inspiration a nation does not draw from such an example as hers, which lifts up even the meanest and most selfish heart to new heights of unselfish love and devotion. "To weep would do her wrong." Her life and death are beautiful as those of the saints of old, and will move mankind like immortal music or song. In the truest sense she may be said to have died happy. Her country will never forget her. Her memory will brace our troops in the hour of battle, and when the grey forms close in the North Sea it will be there. Those who die thus have won immortality.'

_The Daily Chronicle._

'In a War which numbers its casualties by millions, and which has witnessed holocausts of atrocity like the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and the sack of Louvain, the murder of a single lady may seem a small episode. But the enormity of a crime is not always measured by the number of its victims. Here was a lady of education who had devoted her life to the relief of human suffering. The head of a great nursing inst.i.tute, she had helped to train hundreds of nurses, including Germans. When the War broke out she devoted her whole strength to the care of the wounded, and had lavished her personal attention on wounded German soldiers. Latterly she had a.s.sisted certain British, French, and Belgian soldiers to escape to England across the Dutch frontier. Charged with this military offence, she admitted it with complete candour; indeed, she seems to have been the princ.i.p.al witness against herself. One may safely affirm that, having regard to her transparently humanitarian motives and all the circ.u.mstances of the case, no Government in the world but the German would have inflicted the death penalty on such a culprit. They not merely inflicted it, but compa.s.sed its infliction with a mixture of duplicity and brutality that must make every decent human being's gorge rise. Of Miss Cavell herself no one will dispute that if any death in this War has been heroic, hers was; one cannot say less, and no one could say more. The sense of the whole civilized world can be left to judge between this helpless woman and her murderers.'