World's War Events Volume I Part 38

"B . . . was also killed. The second battalion, too, has had heavy losses.

It is frightful. Those confounded high explosive sh.e.l.ls!

[Sidenote: An officer wishes for rain.]

"The weather is becoming fine again. If only it would rain again, or fog would come. As it is, the aviators will arrive and we shall have more high explosive bombs and flank firing on the trenches. Abominable fine weather! Fog, fog, come to our a.s.sistance."

[Sidenote: The enemy's lines.]

It is difficult to estimate precisely the German losses. Certain indications however serve to indicate their extent. A _vizefeldwebel_ declares that he is the only man remaining out of his company. A soldier of the third battalion of the 123rd Regiment engaged on the 26th, states that his regiment was withdrawn from the front after only two days'

fighting because its losses were too great. The 118th Regiment relieved in the trenches the 158th Regiment after it had been reduced to fifteen or twenty men per company. Certain units disappeared completely, as for instance the 27th Reserve Regiment and the 52nd Regular Regiment, which, by the evening of the 25th had left in our hands, the first thirteen officers and 933 men, the second twenty-one officers and 927 men. In order to arrive at the total of the losses certain figures may serve as an indication.

[Sidenote: German strength in Champagne.]

[Sidenote: Ninety-three fresh battalions.]

At the beginning of September, 1915 the Germans had on the Champagne front seventy battalions. In antic.i.p.ation of our attack they brought there, before September 25, 1915, twenty-nine battalions. This makes ninety-nine battalions, representing, if account be taken of the corresponding artillery and pioneer formations, 115,000 men directly engaged. The losses due to the artillery preparation and the first attacks were such that from September 25 to October 15, 1915, the German General Staff was compelled to renew its effectives almost in their entirety by sending ninety-three fresh battalions.

It may be a.s.sumed that the units engaged on September 25 and 26, 1915, suffered losses amounting to from 60 to 80 per cent. (even more for certain corps, which have entirely disappeared). The new units brought into line for the counter-attacks, and subjected in connection with these to an incessant bombardment, lost 50 per cent. of their effectives, if not more. We think we shall be understating the case if we set down 140,000 men as the sum of the German losses in Champagne.

Account must be taken of the fact that of this number the proportion of slightly wounded men able to recuperate rapidly and return to the front is, in the case of the Germans, very much below the average proportion in connection with other engagements by reason of the fact that they were unable to gather up their wounded, and thus left in our hands nearly the whole of the troops entrusted with the defence of the first position.

[Sidenote: Enthusiasm of the French.]

All those who lived through the engagements of the battle of Champagne experienced the sensation of victory. The aspect of the battlefield, the long columns of prisoners, the look in the eyes of our soldiers, their animation and their enthusiasm, all this gave expression to the importance of a success which the Generalissimo recognized in these terms.

[Sidenote: Thanks of the commander-in-chief.]

"Grand Headquarters, "OCTOBER 5, 1915.

"The Commander-in-Chief addresses to the troops under his orders the expression of his profound satisfaction at the results obtained up to the present day by the attacks.

"Twenty-five thousand prisoners, three hundred and fifty officers, a hundred and fifty guns, a quant.i.ty of material which it has not yet been possible to gauge, are the trophies of a victory the echo of which throughout Europe indicates its importance.

"The sacrifices willingly made have not been in vain. All have been able to take part in the common task. The present is a sure guarantee to us of the future.

"The Commander-in-Chief is proud to command the finest troops France has ever known.

"J. JOFFRE."

Of all the brutal atrocities perpetrated by the Germans in Belgium, none aroused such world-wide horror and execration as the murder of Edith Cavell, an English nurse, on the charge of aiding English and Belgian soldiers who escaped from Belgium in order to rejoin their respective armies.

THE TRAGEDY OF EDITH CAVELL

BRAND WHITLOCK

Copyright, Delineator, November, 1918.

[Sidenote: The first letter of inquiry not answered.]

[Sidenote: Reasons given for Miss Cavell's arrest.]

One day in August it was learned at the Legation that an English nurse, named Edith Cavell, had been arrested by the Germans. I wrote a letter to the Baron von der Lancken to ask if it was true that Miss Cavell had been arrested, and saying that if it were I should request that Maitre de Leval, the legal counselor of the Legation, be permitted to see her and to prepare for her defense. There was no reply to this letter, and on September tenth I wrote a second letter, repeating the questions and the requests made in the first. On the twelfth of September I had a reply from the Baron stating that Miss Cavell had been arrested on the fifth of August, that she was confined in the prison of St. Gilles, that she had admitted having hidden English and French soldiers in her home, as well as Belgians, of an age to bear arms, all anxious to get to the front, that she had admitted also having furnished these soldiers with money to get to France, and had provided guides to enable them to cross the Dutch frontier; that the defense of Miss Cavell was in the hands of Maitre Thomas Braun, and that inasmuch as the German Government, on principle, would not permit accused persons to have any interviews whatever, he could not obtain permission for Maitre de Leval to visit Miss Cavell as long as she was in solitary confinement.

[Sidenote: The German mentality.]

[Sidenote: The principle that power makes right.]

[Sidenote: The accused without rights.]

For one of our Anglo-Saxon race and legal traditions to understand conditions in Belgium during the German occupation, it is necessary to banish resolutely from the mind every conception of right we have inherited from our ancestors--conceptions long since crystallized into inimitable principles of law and confirmed in our charters of liberty.

In the German mentality these conceptions do not exist; they think in other sequences; they act according to another principle, if it is a principle, the conviction that there is only one right, one privilege, and that it belongs exclusively to Germany, the right, namely, to do whatever they have the physical force to do. These so-called courts, of whose arbitrary and irresponsible and brutal nature I have tried to convey some notion, were mere inquisitorial bodies, guided by no principle save that of interest in their own b.l.o.o.d.y nature; they did as they pleased, and would have scorned a Jeffreys as too lenient, a Lynch as too formal, a Spanish _auto da fe_ as too technical, and a tribunal of the French Revolution as soft and sentimental. Before them the accused had literally no rights, not even to present a defense, and if he was permitted to speak in his own behalf, it was only as a generous and liberal favor.

It was before such a court that Edith Cavell was to be arraigned. I had asked Maitre de Leval to provide for her defense, and on his advice, inasmuch as Maitre Braun was already of counsel in the case, chosen by certain friends of Miss Cavell, I invited him into consultation.

[Sidenote: Personality of Edith Cavell.]

[Sidenote: Miss Cavell's character and ability.]

Edith Cavell was a frail and delicate little woman about forty years of age. She had come to Brussels some years before the war to exercise her calling as a trained nurse. She soon became known to the leading physicians of the capital and nursed in the homes of the leading families. But she was ambitious, and devoted to her profession, and ere long had entered a nursing-home in the Rue de la Clinique, where she organized for Doctor Depage a training-school for nurses. She was a woman of refinement and education; she knew French as she knew her own language; she was deeply religious, with a conscience almost puritan, and was very stern with herself in what she conceived to be her duty. In her training-school she showed great executive ability, was firm in matters of discipline, and brought it to a high state of efficiency. And every one who knew her in Brussels spoke of her with that unvarying term of respect which her n.o.ble character inspired.

[Sidenote: Mr. Whitlock engages a defender.]

Some time before the trial, Maitre Thomas Braun announced to the Legation that for personal reasons he would be obliged to withdraw from the case, and asked that some one else appear for Miss Cavell. We engaged Maitre Sadi Kirschen.

[Sidenote: The court martial in the Senate chamber.]

It was the morning of Thursday, October seventh, that the case came before the court martial in the Senate chamber, where the military trials always took place, and Miss Cavell was arraigned with the Princess de Croy, the Countess de Belleville, and thirty-two others. The accused were seated in a circle facing the court, in such a way that they could neither see nor communicate with their own counsel, who were compelled to sit behind them. Nor could they see the witnesses, who were also placed behind them.

The charge brought against the accused was that of having conspired to violate the German Military Penal Code, punishing with death those who conduct troops to the enemy.

[Sidenote: The trial secret.]

[Sidenote: Miss Cavell's att.i.tude.]

[Sidenote: 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?"