The Case of Edith Cavell | Page 4

wings of those avenging angels of history who, like the Eumenides of classic mythology, are the avengers of the innocent and the oppressed.
"Greatness," wrote Aeschylus, "is no defense from utter destruction when a man insolently spurns the mighty altar of justice."
This is as true to-day as when it was written more than two thousand years ago. It is but a classic echo of the old Hebraic moral axiom that "the Lord God of recompenses shall surely requite."
The most powerful and self-willed ruler of modern times learned this lesson to his cost. Probably no two instances contributed so powerfully to the ultimate downfall of Napoleon as his ruthless assassination under the forms of military law of the Duke d'Enghien and the equally brutal murder of the German bookseller, Palm. The one aroused the undying enmity of Russia, and the blood that was shed in the moat of Vincennes was washed out in the icy waters of the Beresina. The fate of the poor German bookseller, whom Napoleon caused to be shot because his writing menaced the security of French occupation, developed as no other event the dormant spirit of German nationality, and the Nuremberg bookseller, shot precisely as was Miss Cavell, was finally avenged when Blücher gave Napoleon the coup de grace at Waterloo. No one more clearly felt the invisible presence of his Nemesis than did Napoleon. All his life, and even in his confinement at St. Helena, he was ceaselessly attempting to justify to the moral conscience of the world his ruthless assassination of the last Prince of the house of Condé. The terrible judgment of history was never better expressed than by Lamartine in the following language:
"A cold curiosity carries the visitor to the battlefields of Marengo, Austerlitz, Wagram, Leipsic, Waterloo; he wanders over them with dry eyes, but one is shown at a corner of the wall near the foundations of Vincennes, at the bottom of a ditch, a spot covered with nettles and weeds. He says, 'There it is!' He utters a cry and carries away with him undying pity for the victim and an implacable resentment against the assassin. This resentment is vengeance for the past and a lesson for the future. Let the ambitious, whether soldiers, tribunes, or kings, remember that if they have hirelings to do their will, and flatterers to excuse them while they reign, there yet comes afterward a human conscience to judge them and pity to hate them. The murderer has but one hour; the victim has eternity."
At the outbreak of the war Miss Cavell was living with her aged mother in England. Constrained by a noble and imperious sense of duty, she exchanged the security of her native country for her post of danger in Brussels. "My duty is there," she said simply.
She reached Brussels in August, 1914, and at once commenced her humanitarian work. When the German army entered the gates of Brussels, she called upon Governor von Luttwitz and placed her staff of nurses at the services of the wounded under whatever flag they had fought. The services which she and her staff of nurses rendered many a wounded and dying German should have earned for her the generous consideration of the invader.
But early in these ministrations of mercy she was obliged by the noblest of humanitarian motives to antagonize the German invaders. Governor von Luttwitz demanded of her that all nurses should give formal undertakings, when treating wounded French or Belgian soldiers, to act as jailers to their patients, but Miss Cavell answered this unreasonable demand by simply saying: "We are prepared to do all that we can to help wounded soldiers to recover, but to be their jailers--never."
On another occasion, when appealing to a German Brigadier-General on behalf of some homeless women and children, the Prussian martinet--half pedant and half poltroon--answered her with a quotation from Nietzsche to the effect that "Pity is a waste of feeling--a moral parasite injurious to the health." She early felt the cruel and iron will of the invader, but, nothing daunted, she proceeded in the arduous work, supervised the work of three hospitals, gave six lectures on nursing a week and responded to many urgent appeals of individuals who were in need of immediate relief. "Others she saved, herself she could not save."
When one of her associates, Miss Mary Boyle O'Reilly, who has recently contributed a moving account of Miss Cavell's work, was expelled from Belgium, she begged Miss Cavell to take the opportunity, while it presented itself, to leave that land of horror, and Miss Cavell, with characteristic bravery, replied smilingly: "Impossible, my friend, my duty is here."
It was undoubtedly in connection with this humanitarian work that she violated the German military law by giving refuge to fugitive French and Belgian soldiers until such time as they could