NURSE CAVELL

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2694, 14 February 1916, Page 3

NURSE CAVELL

A FELLOW-WORKER'S STORY. To a small Irish magazine entitled "Tho Missionary Record," Miss Mary O'Reilly contributes a moving account of the work and character of Miss Cavell, with whom she was intimately associated at Brussels. ■ During one short, stem year Miss Cavoll called me "Friend," as I called her "Sister." Brussels was her second home. In August, 1015, L'Ecole Infirmiere Beige, which she had started in one small room with four probationers, had grown to be a vast building, with a largo staff of nurses. .She was in her English home when war wasi declared. "My duty is over there," she said simply. "The bravest woman in Brussels" reached the threatened city none too soon. . . .' One sunset the terrible men in grey wero at the gate.' . . . By the barricade, beneath a Belgian Army flare, stood. Sister Cavell in her prim, crisp gown calmly selecting those refugees who must have emergency relief. Presently she called upon the German commander to place her eurgical institute at the services of the enemy wounded. General von Luttwitz announced that in every hospital recognised by the invaders all nurses should give formal undertakings to act as gaolers to the patients. Sister Edith set the standard for her follow-workers: "We are prepared to do all that we can to help wounded soldiers to recover—but to bo their gaolers—never!" JTie German General's clenched fist smote ule table, but Re defied a will as unbreakable as his own. "He looked," reported Sister Edith (and she laughed as she told it), "he looked as if he would like to shoot me dead." From that day the German authorities in Belgium began to deal harshly rath British Red Cross nurses cut off from the,world. Sister Cavell summoned her girl nurses to warn them, as a mother might her daughters, of 'the personal dangers which threatened. "But, but," gasped a startled nurse, ''are wo surrounded by Zulus?" Edith Cavell's answer was instant —"Daughters, we are surrounded —not by Zulus." Appealing to a German brigadier on •behalf of somo homeless women and children, her argument was answered by this quotation from Nietzsche: — "Pity is a waste of feeling, a moral parasite injurious to the4ealth." Besides directing three hospitals, Sister Cavell gave six lectures every week, attended the. operating theatre daily, and responded personally to the calls of the poor. Only one hour of each arduous day was reserved—that even hour when sha and her Flemish sheep dogs. Jack and Don (scrubbed and sterilised), romped with the night-gowned kiddies in the children's ward until the sandman came. . . . She was amused when the Germans threw mo; out of Brussels as a disturber of the peace. When, as a freeborn American citizen, I motored back "to see niy Minister, Brand Whitlock," I carried with me my maid's passport, Hugh Gibson, Secretary of the Embassy, told me with grave foreboding about the young nurses at the British Hospital. I hurried to Sister. Edith. Gravely and insistently I begged her to come with me to Holland and safety. She listened patiently, as one listens to a_ well-meaning child, and then said, smiling, "Impossible, friend; my dutv is here.!' We never saw her again. When the end came she was alone. But I know that she was cpntent.