WEAVING THE NET.
The full story of the next few months of Edith Cavell’s life cannot
be told until after the war is over. Brussels, as she had written,
became cut off from the world. The hospitable old city became a nest
of spies. “Newspapers were first stopped, then suppressed, and are now
printed under German auspices. The few trains that run for passengers
are in German hands, and wherever you go you must have, and pay for,
a passport. No one speaks to his neighbour in the tram, for he may be
a spy. Besides, what news is there to tell, and who has the heart to
gossip, and what fashions are there to speak of, and who ever goes to
a concert or a theatre nowadays, and who would care to tell of their
all-absorbing anxiety as to how to make ends meet and spin out the last
of the savings, or to keep the little mouths at home filled, with the
stranger close by?”
The frank, open nature of Edith Cavell was ill-fitted for such an
atmosphere of fear and deception. Everyone was “suspect,” as in the
days of the Paris Terror in 1793. It was enough, as then, to fall under
“suspicion of being suspect.” Edith Cavell was suspected, and cunning
men sought how they might weave a net of accusation around her.
Nurse Cavell was an Englishwoman. That, was the beginning of her
offence. I am not here to say she did no wrong. The full significance
of her own brave admissions cannot yet be revealed. Her crime was the
crime of humanity. The beginning of her offence, to the suspicious
German mind, was that she was English and was popular. Everyone spoke
of her untiring kindness and unfailing courage. It was enough. She must
be dangerous, or all the world would not speak well of her. Nobody
spoke well of the German governors of Brussels.
There is reason to believe that Miss Cavell came in contact, once at
least, with the terrible Baron Von Bissing, the Governor-General. He
formed a strong opinion of her capacity and dauntless courage. The same
head that contrived her secret trial and execution, directed, there
is little reason to doubt, the weaving of the web that ensnared her.
The cleverest spies in Von Bissing’s service were set to watch her.
They found out that she had given a greatcoat to a French soldier who
afterwards escaped across the Dutch frontier. On another occasion she
had given an exhausted Englishman a glass of water. Then the spies
said, what was likely enough, that she had given money to Belgians, and
that this had enabled them to escape.
In every part of the world these would be simple acts of humanity--for
the suspicious Von Bissing they were crimes. “This must be stopped,” he
ordered.