REMEMBER THE MURDER OF MISS CAVELL

Taranaki Daily News, 13 January 1916, Page 2

REMEMBER THE MURDER OF MISS CAVELL

Lest there be any still umvakened and unroused, 1 shall quote here a few sen« tences from the report of tlio coldblooded, brutal murder by the Germans of Nurse Cavell: She was led into the garden by soldiers from a house near by, blindfolded with a black scarf. Up to this minute Nurse Cavell, though deadly white, had stepped out bravely to meet her fate. But before the rifle party her strength at last gave out, and she tottered, and fell to the ground thirty yards or more from the spot against the wall where she was to have been shot.' The officer in charge of the execution walked to her; she lay prone on the ground, motionless. The officer then drew a largg service pistol from his holt, took steady aim from his knee, and shot her through the head as she lay on the floor. The firing party looked on.

I do not think anything that has happened during the whole course of this horrible war has made so deep and bitter an impression upon me as that account of the murder of a noble Englishwoman by a beastly German officer. I want every reader of the Weekly Dispatch to eut that story out and put it in his pocket book or stick it in his hat, so that he may never forget. I hope if ever a German has the impudence to speak to a Briton, or if ever a pro-German has the "face" to speak of peace, or forgiveness for the Huns, that damning report of the cowardly murder of an Englishwoman who had nursed Prussian wounded vvil be read aloud as an answei to tiny plea for mercy or respect for the vile race who alone in all Europe are capable of such a deed. I have put that tragic story in here because I know it will help to give out over-patient and too-forgiving people some idea of the low-down, blackguardly nation we are fighting. I want our' people and our Allies to be immovably and inflexibly anti-German during the war and after the war, because I am convinced that the peace of the world and the security oi our Empire depend upon the Germans being not only defeated but being put for a century outside the pale of human trust and credit. In connection with this feeling I will repeat the complaint made by Mr. Charles Palmer at the city meeting held to demand reprisals for German air raids. Mr. Palmer said "the country felt that it lacked a strong anil rigorous anti-German Government." That is a true and apt saying. The worst fault of our Government is that they are not and never have been anti-German. We shall all have to be out-and-out implacable anti-German before we can end tlii < war, and we shall all have to be still mote anti-German after the war if we do not intend tho»e unspeakable savages lo pollute our air. Remember that -tory of the murder of Nurse Cavell. Remember how the Huns murdered that Englishwoman in the Belgian garden: and see lo it that Germany remember.- it as lung as we do.—Robert Match ford.