The Germans have committed many more indefensible crimes than
the military execution of the kind-hearted nurse who had helped
war-prisoners to escape. They have murdered hundreds of women who
had committed no offence whatever against their military rules. But
though not the worst of their misdeeds, this has probably been the
stupidest. It gained us almost as many recruits as the sinking of the
_Lusitania_, and it made the whole world understand--what is unhappily
the truth--that the German is wholly destitute of chivalry. He knows
indeed that people of other nations are affected by this sentiment; but
he despises them for it. Woman is the weaker vessel; and therefore,
according to his code, she must be taught to know her place, which
is to cook and sew, and produce “cannon-fodder” for the Government.
Readers of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche will remember the advice given
by those philosophers for the treatment of women. Nietzsche recommends
a whip. It never occurred to German officialdom that the pedantic
condemnation of one obscure woman, guilty by the letter of their law,
would stir the heart of England and America to the depths, and steel
our soldiers to further efforts against an enemy whose moral unlikeness
to ourselves becomes more apparent with every new phase in the struggle.