Britain's Solemn Homage to Nurse Gavell.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 129, 7 January 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

Britain's Solemn Homage to Nurse Gavell.

By HALL 0 Death, where is they sting? U grave, where is thy victory?

Down lo a. fortnight ago (writes Ha!! Caine, the world-lamous novelist, in the "Daily Sketch" of October ;10), few Juf us outside the immediate circle of Nurse Cavell's family and friends hau even so much as heard her name. Now all the world knows it. It has gone, as by a supernatural trumpet-blast, to the uttermost parts of the earth. Mingled with a cry of horror and execration at a brutal act of tyranny, il has rung round the globe. And today ten thousand persons have assembled in the Cathedral church of the capital of our Empire to thank God for the great soul it stood for in this transitory existence, to perpetuate her memory, and to quicken the holy spirit of self-sacrifice which was exemplified in her life and death. UNFORGETTABLE SCENE. What a scene it has been! None of us will ever forget it! In the grey dawn of one of the first days of winter. London was already moving towards St. Paul's Cathedral. The morning was fine, but the City was heavy and sad. Long before the service began the traffic in the streets around the Cathedarl was first impeded, then arrested, and finally stopped. At length a cordon of po'ice had to keep back the surging swaying crowds who were struggling to reach the doors. inside the Cathedral what a sight it was! A vast multitude, stretching from the chance! steins and the broad space under the dome to where the colossal statues of England's mighty dead emerged from the gloom by the far-off portica.

The grey old sanctuary has witnessed many a great and moving spectacle—■Oi'vices of intercession, of supplication, of lamentation, of thanksgiving, of rcid.'cing, and of mourning—but perhaps neve,- before has it seen anything quite like this. What an assembly! The King, represented by the Queen's secretary, O'uen Alexandra (the beloved of the people) in her own person, the Prime Minister, many members of his Cabinet, statesmen, scholars, .scientists, a great company of mines in their various uniforms, fresh from the great houses of pain, pathetic groups here and there of wounded so'diers home from the battlefields, and then an immense concourse of the general public, chiefly women, many of them in b'ack, the wives, thesisters , and the mothers of the brave lads who are fighting for us at the front, and of the other brave fellows who have already fought and fallen there.

THE GREAT SERVICE AT ST. PAULS.

CAINE. us: "I am the Resurrection and the I Lite." Sometimes it seems as though a voico •Iron: that despised and dishonoured grave in the prison-yard of Brussels wore speaking to us here in St. Paul's; sometimes as if a cry from the inmos: heart of man against suffering, injustice, and wrong were going up to tho Great Being who is so far away and can only be reached by a cry, and sometimes as if, through the vravej of sound that roll over our heads, wo were hearing the very voice and promise of God himself: "Be comforted, my children. Your Father is m Heaven. All will yet be .well with His world."

It is part of the mystery of music, especially of sacred music, that under its magical spell we forget our surroundings and are carried away to scenes physically remote, but spiritually near. Something of that kind must have occurred to many of us yesterday. It occurred to me.

As 1 listened to the service in mem. ory of Nurse Cave'l, pictures of her life seemed to pass before me in swift review, pulsing and throbbing out of the darkness of my closed eyes. What a tragedy they represented ! Yet what a glorious triumph, too. First, her visit fourteen months ago to the little home of her mother near Norwich. There she hears of the outbreak of the war, and of the entrance of tho Germany Army into Brussels. She must go back to her hospital. Suffering is certain; nursing will be necessary ; so the mother must be left behind, although the fire on the hearth of her old age is burning low. Then back to the hospital in Brussels. The battle of the Ma me has been lost and won by this time, and many of tho wounded are being brought in from the firing line. Some of them belong to the enemy country, but her big heart makes no reckoning with that. She nurses all who come to her, never asking which is German and which is British, for in the empire of suffering, nationality is unknown! Montlis pass. Fugitives of her own nation are seeking refuge from the tyranny of the alien Government that controls the city. To save them from captivity, and perhaps death, she first shelters and then helps them to fly across the frontier.

Some of them reach England and write letters from here to thank her. These letters lead to her detection. Slit! is arrested for conspiracy, and thrown into gaol Two other months pass. Nurse Cavell has been lying in the Military Governor of guilt-burdened m:\ii tie authoriu^d hlodfl to prqu^JJ He h^M

Never for a moment does her spirit tail her. She (hanks (i<<l for her ten long weeks in prison. Life has always boon so hurried am' full of difficulty that thin time of rc->l before the end has been n great merry. And then —oh, infinite charity of 'be soul niOfit sacredly innocent die speak-; kindly of her enemies - , ol her gaolers, feeling no hatred or hitter , .i*>s'4 towards anyone, and. standing on the brink of Eternity, forgives all as she hopes to be forgiven. It is now 2 o'clock in the morning of an October day. We are out in the dark and desolate prison yard. Brussels Hes asleep. There ifi hardly a sound in the air except perhaps the low looming of cannon, very f.rnt and far away. THE BURIAL AT DAWN. A firing company form- up in front of a high wall. A woman in a nurse's costume stands alone with her back to it and her pale face forward. There is the Hash of a lantern to -how where she is, then a sharp word of command, and then a .shower of bullet-. Jt is all over!

When dawn breaks upon Brussels again, and the sparrow* begin to chirp, and a shaft of light from the unri-en sun. shooting through tlie vanishing darkness of the gky, is lighting up the giid'ed cross on the spue of the nearest church, a German chaplain of the Belgian prison, .standing alone in the. empty prison-yard, is reading the burial service over an open grave : "I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live and whosoever believeth in Me shall never die."

Oh, my sister, happier now rind more blessed than we are. do you know what you have done for us? In the world to which you have gone, on the far eternal shore you have reached amid the saluting clarions of martyrs, docs no heavenly voice tell you? Has not the angel of the resurrect ion revealed everything? Can you not look down to-day into this old sanctuary on Us who are gathered here and .see all? FROM THE HOLY (IF HOLTES.

Though difficulties are still before us, and danger and death, nothing our enemies can do will hurt us any more You may lie in a traitor's despised and dishonoured grave, but the memory of your end will be with us henceforth, like the protecting and strengthening arm of God.

The service is over. After the Liturgy of St. Ch rysostam. sung to the searching Russian chant: after the deep reverberations of the Dead March, with its tremulous roll of drums; after the last solemn words of the Benediction and the grand silence that followed it; after the crashing notes of the National Anthem which "fpnif I to rend (lie very r<^p^^^^ CiithJM often wiUj^H of tlu^gtf