Nelson's history of the war. Vol. XI., The struggle for the Dvina, and the great invasion of Serbia

THE POLITICAL SITUATION. 65

Miss Cavell’s execution was a judicial murder. It was judicial since, on the letter of the German ~ military law, she was liable to the extreme penalty. But in the case of a woman and a nurse who had ministered to German sick and wounded the pedantry which exacted that penalty was an outrage on human decency. That the German authorities were uneasy about their work is shown by the secrecy which they insisted upon, and which Sir Edward Grey in his letter to Mr. Page rightly denounced. There was little comment in the German Press, and there is evidence that the incident was by no means applauded by Germany at large. Herr Zimmermann, the German Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, could only defend it by a legend of a ““ world-wide conspiracy,” and by the familiar plea of the necessity of * frightfulness ” in a crisis “to frighten those who may presume on their sex to take part in enterprises punishable with death.” In France and Britain, in Holland and America, the murder woke a profound horror, and revealed as in a flashlight the psychology of that German “ culture ”’ which proposed to regenerate the world. Von Bissing and his colleagues stood clear in all their lean and mechanical poverty of soul, cruel by rule, brutal by the text-books, ruthless after a sealed pattern, but yet without the courage of their barbarity, for their policy was furtively pursued and safeguarded with deceit.

Against that dark background the spirit of the lonely Englishwoman shone the brighter. We would

* As was pointed out at the time, a close parallel was to be found in the execution of Dame Alice Lisle by Jeffreys at the Bloody Assize.

XI. 5