Nurse Cavell

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28606, 7 June 1958, Page 3

Nurse Cavell

Edith Cavell. Cassell. .By A. A. Hoehling. 149 pp. To a generation familiar with the dark deeds of the Gestapo this story of a woman heroically facing a firing squad in the Kaiser’s war may not seem unduly harrowing. But in 1915, when Edith Cavell was condemned to death by German judges for assisting Belgian, French and British soldiers to escape from Brussels the EnglishSpeaking world was shocked beyond measure and the English Army gained thousands of recruits dedicated to exacting vengeance for the outrage. Nurse Cavell was the directrice of a clinic in Brussels when the War broke out. The daughter of a Norfolk parson she had been brought up in a tradition of Christian duty and service, and when she decided to become a nurse she was imbued with the same spirit of dedication which had inspired Florence Nightingale. During the confused period Which followed the early German successes in France and Flanders many Allied soldiers were at large in the occupied territories, and when asked to assist them to escape over the border to neutral Holland, Edith Cavell and her nurses did not hesitate to hide and equip the fugitives. At the same they carried out their nursing duties punctiliously, according the same care, to the German wounded as they gave to their own compatriots. Notwithstanding this undoubted fact the Germans, when their spysystem uncovered the conspiracy, took swift and ruthless action. Yet they exacted the death penalty in only two cases, the Belgian architect Bauck, and the English nurse. With a passionate love of truth, and possibly a will to martyrdom. Nurse Cavell admitted her responsibility and declined to ask for clemency, which somewhat hampered the American Ambassador, Brand Whitlock, in his efforts to bring American influence to bear on her behalf. She met her death with calmness and fortitude, almost, it seemed to those who knew her best, with relief. By stolidly refusing to bow to neutral oninion the Germans increased the animus against them to an incredible degree, and the austere statue of Nurse Cavell, inscrib-’d with her famous words “Patriotism is not enough.” which stands for ever in Trafalgar Square is not only a monument to a brave woman but a testimony to the diplomatic ineptitude $ her enemies.