THE COMING OF THE GERMANS.
We reach now the last year of Edith Cavell’s life, for which all the
others had been a preparation. When she arrived in Brussels, the
Germans were shelling Liége. The gallant little Belgium Army stood
drawn up across the path of the invaders. It was believed that the
French and British would soon arrive to drive the Germans back. The
Belgian Government was still in Brussels. Cheery Burgomaster Max kept
order with his Civic Guard. In the autumn of 1915 we are all wiser.
Miss Cavell has herself described, in an article sent home to the
_Nursing Mirror_, how the bitter truth came home to Brussels:--
Brussels lay that evening [August 20th] breathless with anxiety. News
came that the Belgians, worn out and weary, were unable to hold back
the oncoming host who might be with us that night. Still we clung to
the hope that the English Army was between us and the unseen peril....
In the evening came the news that the enemy were at the gates. At
midnight bugles were blowing, summoning the Civic Guard to lay down
their arms and leave the city. Many people were up through the dark
hours, and all doors and windows were tightly shut. As we went to bed
our only consolation was that in God’s good time right and justice
must prevail.
The sympathies of Nurse Cavell were all with the Belgians and their
Allies. How could it be otherwise? Yet, when the Germans came she spoke
with sympathy of the tired and footsore men in the enemy’s host:--
On August 21st [she wrote] many more troops came through; from our
road we could see the long procession, and when the halt was called at
midday and carts came up with supplies some were too weary to eat, and
slept on the pavement of the street.
We were divided between pity for these poor fellows far from their
country and their people, suffering the weariness and fatigue of an
arduous campaign, and hate of a cruel and vindictive foe bringing
ruin and desolation on hundreds of happy homes and to a prosperous and
peaceful land.
Some of the Belgians spoke to the invaders in German, and found they
were very vague as to their whereabouts, and imagined they were
already in Paris; they were surprised to be speaking to Belgians, and
could not understand what quarrel they had with them.
I saw several of the men pick up little children and give them
chocolate or seat them on their horses, and some had tears in their
eyes at the recollection of the little ones at home.
From that date till now we have been cut off from the world....
The German nurses training under Miss Cavell had already
left--conducted to the frontier by her to save them the anxiety of
being in an enemy capital. At this time the German soldiers were
ruthlessly slaughtering Belgian women and children. The new authorities
approved of her continuing her work: no longer, since the outbreak of
war, a training institution, but a Red Cross Hospital. It is admitted
even by her enemies that she threw herself ardently into her work
without respect of nationality. Wounded Belgians and Germans were
treated alike. Many German officers passed through her hands.
There is now in hospital in England a wounded Belgian who knew Miss
Cavell in Brussels in those first days of the German occupation, and
who speaks of the universal affection in which she was held.