A TRIBUTE TO MISS CAVELL.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR,..]
Sirt,—Few deeds have struck more horror into English minds than the cold-blooded killing of Nurse Cavell. I do not know whether or not she was guilty of an offence punishable by death, but we all know that the whole British Army does not contain one officer (save the word !) who would have knelt down and shot the wounded and fainting woman, and I do not believe that six soldiers could be found who would have carried out the order even if disobedience meant death for themselves.
Let me add a small tribute to Nurse Cavell's work. All the time she was at the London Hospital she was a gentle, sympathetic, good nurse of rather a retiring disposition, though evidently a woman of strong character. She did particularly well when, on our private staff, she was sent to help in that dreadful outbreak of typhoid at Maidstone, and where, owing to the sudden nature of the epidemic, the arrangements for nursing the patients were difficult and primitive. She did her work there with energy and fearless- ness. After her four years at the London Hospital she held various important poste, and then went to Belgium as the head of a training school for nurses, I think the pioneer school in that country. She kept in touch always with her old hospital, and we rejoiced in her success. Her name will not easily be forgotten in that country—nor in this, I hope, Then came the war. After the Marne retreat many English soldiers took refuge in farms and villages in Belgium, and she set to work to help them to return to their own country. She put duty before life, and all nurses are proud of her. Some people set a noble example by the way they live, others by the way they face death. She has done both. But what of those who killed her P I wish we could know the name of that officer. We could then have a new adjective when we wish to describe an unspeakably brutal ad. His name should live also for ever. How can we talk of peace, how can we ever again tolerate in our country members of a nation who are proud of such deeds and call them Kultur Let me tell another story, illustrative of German Kultur. One hesitates to believe the stories one hears, because they are so utterly foreign to anything we have ever dreamt of except from savages, and one hopes that the stories may have been exaggerated as they have passed from person to person. But this one I had from the young officer himself when he was a patient in the hospital for officers suffering from nervous shock at 10 Palace Green. He was in a cottage which was being shelled by the Germans. A beam fell down and pinned him to the ground. The house bad to be evacuated, but he could not move or be released. When the Germans entered he asked the officer in command to have the beam lifted, as he was in great pain. The brute (I have no adjective in my vocabulary) spat on him, called up a sentry, and told him to keep guard over him, and from Thursday evening to Sunday morning, when the English regained possession of the cottage, he was kept there pinned under the beam and nothing given him to eat or drink 1 What is bad enough for a nation that can produce such monstrosities, and what will the world be like if such a nation is to be allowed, from any faltering on our part, to impose its Kultur upon other nations am, Sir, &o., KNUTSFOILD, Kneeswortlt Hall, .Royston, Herts.
[Lord Knuteford's letter arrived too late for last Saturday's issue. He desires us to add that the form of memorial is now settled. It stas described as follows by Lord Knutaford in
his letter in Tuesday's issue of the Daily Mirror "London Hospital, Whitechapel, [To me EDITOR or Tun DAILY Ilfmnon
Previous page
