MARTYR TO HATE.

Taihape Daily Times, 13 December 1918, Page 5

MARTYR TO HATE.

MISS EDITH CAVELL. GERMAN CRIME RECALLED. ! Mr. Burau Whitlock, formerly American Ambassador to Belgium, who struggled go hard to save the life of Nurse Cavcll, has written a denunci- j ation of the murderers of this English martyr:— “Why was Miss Cavell singled out among all others as the one to be shot at dawn on the morning after the condemnation?” he asks. “Why, if justice, even rude military justice, was being done, were they not all shot, or, at least, all condemned to death? Why this signal distinction, this marked and tragic determination? Because Edith Cavell was English, that was her offence. And so they slew her; slew the nurse who had cared for their own wounded soldiers —those generals with stars on their breasts and iron crosses, bestowed for bravery and gallantry. “They could not even await the unfolding of their own legal processes; they could not wait even the few days they had allotted to the Countess de Belleville, to Madame Thuiliez, or to Severin, the Belgian, although the Countess and Madame Thuiliez, if all that is now known of the eomplot and the trial is true, were as deeply involved as Miss Cavell. They had ' been associated in the conspiracy, if I the word may be employed, to aid | British soldiers to escape; the only I fact that saved the Princess de Croy j was her declaration that after the men reached Brussels she did not know I what bceame of them.

“But Messieurs les Militaire‘s must hide their intentions, perhaps even from their own colleagues in the Government of occupation, and shuffle their frail victim out by stealth in the night, like midnight garroters and gun men, because she was English. The armies of Great Britain were just then making a great offensive. and it was partly in petty spite for this. partly an expression of the _violent hatred the Germansbore everything English, the savage feeling_that_:had been fostered and kept aliveand fanned into a fur-; ious flame by historians and herr professors and herr" doktoprshand herr pastors and editors with their editorials and harangues and hymns of hate, thatthey did what they did. It was in that spirit that they pronounced their judgment secretly in her prison cell and hurried her out and slew her before dawn and another day should, come in which the voice -of pity could get itself heard. _The§r o.mlldn’t wait for that, and they would ‘not disturb Von Bissing, there at his game of bridge in the chateau of Trois Fontaines.”