The Case of Edith Cavell Part 1

The Case of Edith Cavell.

by James M. Beck.

THE CASE OF EDITH CAVELL.

A Reply to Dr. Albert Zimmermann, Germany's Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

By JAMES M. BECK,

_Former a.s.sistant Attorney-General of the United States, and Author of "The Dual Alliance v. The Triple Entente," and "The Evidence in the Case."_

_Mr. Beck, who is one of the leaders of the New York Bar, is the author of the most widely read article written since the war began, ent.i.tled: "The Dual Alliance v. The Triple Entente," which was subsequently expanded into a book, called "The Evidence in the Case," p.r.o.nounced by a distinguished publicist to be "the cla.s.sic of the war." After its publication in THE NEW YORK TIMES this article was reprinted in nearly every language of the civilized nations and over a million copies of it were published._

Those who have regarded the Supreme Court of Civilization--meaning thereby the moral sentiment of the world--as a mere rhetorical phrase or an idle illusion should take note how swiftly that court--sitting now as one of criminal a.s.size--has p.r.o.nounced sentence upon the murderers of Edith Cavell. The swift vengeance of the world's opinion has called to the bar General Baron von Bissing, and in executing him with the lightning of universal execration has forever degraded him.

Baron von der Lancken may possibly escape general obloquy, for his part in the crime was no greater than that of Pilate, who sought to wash his hands of innocent blood; but von Bissing will enjoy "until the last syllable of recorded time" the unenviable fame of Judge Jeffreys. He, too, was an able Judge and probably believed that he was executing justice, but because he did not execute it in mercy, but with a ferocity that has made his name a synonym for judicial tyranny, the world has condemned him to lasting infamy, and this notwithstanding the fact that he was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Lord High Chancellor of England, and a peer of the realm. All these t.i.tles are forgotten. Only that of "b.l.o.o.d.y Jeffreys" remains.

Similarly, if his master shall be pleased to honor General Baron von Bissing with the iron cross for his action in the case of Miss Cavell, as the Kaiser honored the Captain of the submarine which destroyed the Lusitania--and what order could be more appropriate in both cases than the cross, which recalls how another innocent victim of judicial tyranny was sacrificed?--then even the Order of the Iron Cross will not save von Bissing from lasting obloquy. I do not question that he acted according to his lights and shared with Dr. Albert Zimmermann great "surprise"

that the world should make such a sensation about the murder of one woman. Trajan once said that the possession of absolute power had a tendency to transform even the most humane man into a wild beast, and Judge Black in his great argument in the case of _ex parte_ Milligan recalled the fact that Robespierre in his early life resigned his commission as Judge rather than p.r.o.nounce the sentence of death, and that Caligula pa.s.sed as a very amiable young man before he a.s.sumed the imperial purple. The story is as old as humanity that the appet.i.te for blood, or at least the habit of murder, "grows by what it feeds upon."

The murder of Miss Cavell was one of exceptional brutality and stupidity. It never occurred to her judges that her murder would add an army corps to the forces of the Allies and that every English soldier will fight more bravely because of her s.h.i.+ning example. So little was this appreciated either in Brussels or Berlin that the German Foreign Office, in its official apology for the crime, issued over the signature of Herr Doctor Albert Zimmermann, Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs, expresses its surprise

_that the shooting of an Englishwoman and the condemnation of several women in Brussels for treason have caused a sensation._

What extraordinary moral navete! How could they appreciate that after the firing squad had done its work and the body of the woman had been given hasty burial the victim's virtues would

"plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep d.a.m.nation of her taking off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or Heaven's cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind."

This happened with incredible rapidity, and the Kaiser made haste to respite the eight other intended victims--two of them being also women--and the Berlin Foreign Office also issued to the world its defense of its action.

It began with an expression of "pity that Miss Cavell had to be executed," but the sincerity of this pity can be measured by the fact that concurrently with Dr. Zimmermann's official apology there came from Berlin an "inspired" supplemental explanation, which sought to depreciate the character and services of the dead nurse by stating "that she earned a living by nursing, _charging fees within the means of the wealthy only_."

The world has an abundant refutation of this cruel and cowardly slur upon the memory of a dead woman, for one who first hazarded her life and then gave it freely to save the lives of others--for such was the charge for which she died--is not a woman to restrict her gracious ministrations of mercy for mercenary motives.

The Kaiser has been swift to see the deadly injury to his cause of this latest evidence of military tyranny. Not only has he respited Miss Cavell's alleged accomplices--as if to say with Macbeth, "thou canst not say I did it"--but it is said that he has summoned von Bissing and von der Lancken to explain their actions in the matter, but as the Kaiser is responsible for the invasion of Belgium and has. .h.i.therto condoned its attendant horrors, he can no more absolve himself from some share of responsibility than could Macbeth disavow his responsibility for the deeds of his two hirelings.

_The stain of this murder rests upon Prussian militarism and not upon the German people_, for it should not be forgotten that possibly the most chivalrous act which has happened since the beginning of the war, was the erection by a German community, where a detention camp was maintained, of a statue to the French and English soldiers who had died in captivity, with the beautiful inscription:

"To our Comrades, who here died for their dear Fatherland."

What could be more chivalrous or present a greater contrast to the a.s.sa.s.sination of Miss Cavell?

We are advised by Dr. Zimmermann that Miss Cavell was given a fair trial and was justly convicted, but as the proceedings of the trial were not public and as Miss Cavell was denied knowledge in advance of the trial of the nature of the charges against her, _and as we know little of the circ.u.mstances of her alleged offense except the reports of her judges and executioners_, the world will be somewhat incredulous as to whether the trial was as just to the accused as Dr. Zimmermann would have us believe.

The difficulty with this a.s.surance is that the German conception of what is a fair trial differs from that which prevails in Anglo-Saxon countries, just as the German word "Gerechtigkeit" does not convey the same mental or moral conception as the English word "justice."

"Gerechtigkeit" means little more to the Teutonic mind than the exercise of the power of the State, and claims no further sanction than its authority. In England, France, and the United States the idea of justice is that an individual has certain fundamental and inalienable rights which even the State cannot override, and none of these fundamental rights have been more highly valued in the evolution of English liberty than the rights of a defendant who is charged with crime. Whether guilty or not guilty, he cannot be arrested without a judicial warrant on proof of probable cause; he may not be compelled to testify against himself; he is ent.i.tled to a speedy trial and shall be informed in advance thereof of the exact nature of the accusation; his trial shall be public and open, and he shall be confronted with the witnesses against him and have compulsory process for his own defense; in advance of trial he shall have permission to select his own counsel, and shall have the opportunity to confer freely with him.

_Most of these fundamental rights were denied to Miss Cavell._

It is difficult to understand why, in view of the policy of terrorism, which has prevailed in Belgium from the time that the invader first crossed its frontier, the justice from the standpoint of military law should be referred to in Herr Zimmermann's defense. In the official textbook of the General Staff of the German Army the definite policy of terrorizing a conquered country is proclaimed as a military theory. Its leading axiom is that

"a war conducted with energy cannot be directed merely against the combatants of the enemy State and the positions they occupy, _but it will and must in like manner seek to destroy the total intellectual and material resources of the latter_. Humanitarian claims, such as the protection of men and their goods, can only be taken into consideration in so far as the nature and object of the war permit. Consequently the argument of war permits every belligerent State _to have recourse to all means which enable it to obtain the object of the war_."

Miss Cavell's fate only differs from that of hundreds of Belgium women and children in that she had the pretense of a trial and presumably had trespa.s.sed against military law, while other victims of the rape of Belgium were ruthlessly killed in order to effect a speedy subjugation of the territory. The question of the guilt or innocence of each individual was a matter of no importance. Hostages were taken and not for the alleged wrongs of others.

Did not General von Bulow on August 22nd announce to the inhabitants of Liege that

"_it is with my consent that the General in command has burned down the place [Andenne] and shot about 100 inhabitants._"

It was the same chivalrous and humane General who posted a proclamation at Namur on August 25th as follows:

"Before 4 o'clock all Belgian and French soldiers are to be delivered up as prisoners of war. Citizens who do not obey this will be condemned to hard labor for life in Germany. At 4 o'clock a rigorous inspection of all houses will be made. _Every soldier found will be shot._ * * * _The streets will be held by German guards, who will hold ten hostages for each street. These hostages will be shot if there is any trouble in that street._ * * * A crime against the German Army will compromise the existence of the whole town of Namur _and every one in it_."

Did not Field Marshal von der Goltz issue a proclamation in Brussels, on October 5th, stating that, if any individual disturbed the telegraphic or railway communications, all the inhabitants would be "_punished without pity, the innocent suffering with the guilty_"?

Individual guilt being thus a matter of minor importance, Dr. Zimmermann had no occasion on the accepted theory of Prussian militarism to justify the secret trial and midnight execution of Edith Cavell. Indeed, he freely intimates that his Government will not spare women, no matter how high and n.o.ble the motive may have been which inspires any infraction of military law, and to this sweeping statement he makes but one exception, namely, that women "in a delicate condition may not be executed." But why the exception? If it be permitted to destroy one life for the welfare of the military administration of Belgium, why stop at two? If the innocent living are to be sacrificed, why spare the unborn? The exception itself shows that the rigor of military law must have some limitation, and that its iron rigor must be softened by a discretion dictated by such considerations of chivalry and magnanimity as have hitherto been observed by all civilized nations. If the victim of yesterday had been an "expectant mother," Dr. Zimmermann suggests that her judges and executioners would have spared her, but no such exception can be found in the Prussian military code. "It is not so nominated in the bond," and the Under Secretary's recognition of one exception, based upon considerations of humanity and not the letter of the military code, destroys the whole fabric of his case, _for it clearly shows that there was a power of discretion which von Bissing could have exercised, if he had so elected_.

That her case had its claims not only to magnanimity, but even to military justice, is shown by the haste with which, in the teeth of every protest, the unfortunate woman was hurried to her end. Sentenced at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, she was executed nine hours later. Of what was General Baron von Bissing afraid? She was in his custody. Her power to help her country--save by dying--was forever at an end. The hot haste of her execution and the duplicity and secrecy which attended it betray an unmistakable fear that if her life had been spared until the world could have known of her death sentence, public opinion would have prevented this cruel and cowardly deed. The labored apology of Dr.

Zimmermann and the swift action of the Kaiser in pardoning those who were condemned with Miss Cavell indicate that the Prussian officials have heard the beating of the wings of those avenging angels of history who, like the Eumenides of cla.s.sic mythology, are the avengers of the innocent and the oppressed.

"_Greatness_," wrote Aeschylus, "_is no defense from utter destruction when a man insolently spurns the mighty altar of justice_."

This is as true to-day as when it was written more than two thousand years ago. It is but a cla.s.sic echo of the old Hebraic moral axiom that "the Lord G.o.d of recompenses shall surely requite."

The most powerful and self-willed ruler of modern times learned this lesson to his cost. Probably no two instances contributed so powerfully to the ultimate downfall of Napoleon as his ruthless a.s.sa.s.sination under the forms of military law of the Duke d'Enghien and the equally brutal murder of the German bookseller, Palm. The one aroused the undying enmity of Russia, and the blood that was shed in the moat of Vincennes was washed out in the icy waters of the Beresina. The fate of the poor German bookseller, whom Napoleon caused to be shot because his writing menaced the security of French occupation, developed as no other event the dormant spirit of German nationality, and the Nuremberg bookseller, shot precisely as was Miss Cavell, was finally avenged when Blucher gave Napoleon the _coup de grace_ at Waterloo. No one more clearly felt the invisible presence of his Nemesis than did Napoleon. All his life, and even in his confinement at St. Helena, he was ceaselessly attempting to justify to the moral conscience of the world his ruthless a.s.sa.s.sination of the last Prince of the house of Conde. The terrible judgment of history was never better expressed than by Lamartine in the following language:

"A cold curiosity carries the visitor to the battlefields of Marengo, Austerlitz, Wagram, Leipsic, Waterloo; he wanders over them with dry eyes, but one is shown at a corner of the wall near the foundations of Vincennes, at the bottom of a ditch, a spot covered with nettles and weeds. He says, 'There it is!' He utters a cry and carries away with him undying pity for the victim and an implacable resentment against the a.s.sa.s.sin. This resentment is vengeance for the past and a lesson for the future. _Let the ambitious, whether soldiers, tribunes, or kings, remember that if they have hirelings to do their will, and flatterers to excuse them while they reign, there yet comes afterward a human conscience to judge them and pity to hate them. The murderer has but one hour; the victim has eternity._"

At the outbreak of the war Miss Cavell was living with her aged mother in England. Constrained by a n.o.ble and imperious sense of duty, she exchanged the security of her native country for her post of danger in Brussels. "My duty is there," she said simply.

She reached Brussels in August, 1914, and at once commenced her humanitarian work. When the German army entered the gates of Brussels, she called upon Governor von Luttwitz and placed her staff of nurses at the services of the wounded under whatever flag they had fought. The services which she and her staff of nurses rendered many a wounded and dying German should have earned for her the generous consideration of the invader.

But early in these ministrations of mercy she was obliged by the n.o.blest of humanitarian motives to antagonize the German invaders. Governor von Luttwitz demanded of her that all nurses should give formal undertakings, when treating wounded French or Belgian soldiers, to act as jailers to their patients, but Miss Cavell answered this unreasonable demand by simply saying: "We are prepared to do all that we can to help wounded soldiers to recover, but to be their jailers--never."

On another occasion, when appealing to a German Brigadier-General on behalf of some homeless women and children, the Prussian martinet--half pedant and half poltroon--answered her with a quotation from Nietzsche to the effect that "Pity is a waste of feeling--a moral parasite injurious to the health." She early felt the cruel and iron will of the invader, but, nothing daunted, she proceeded in the arduous work, supervised the work of three hospitals, gave six lectures on nursing a week and responded to many urgent appeals of individuals who were in need of immediate relief. "Others she saved, herself she could not save."

When one of her a.s.sociates, Miss Mary Boyle O'Reilly, who has recently contributed a moving account of Miss Cavell's work, was expelled from Belgium, she begged Miss Cavell to take the opportunity, while it presented itself, to leave that land of horror, and Miss Cavell, with characteristic bravery, replied smilingly: "Impossible, my friend, my duty is here."

It was undoubtedly in connection with this humanitarian work that she violated the German military law by giving refuge to fugitive French and Belgian soldiers until such time as they could escape across the frontier to Holland. For this she suffered the penalty of death, and the validity of this sentence, even under Prussian military law, I will discuss later. It is enough to say that no instinct is so natural in every man and woman, and especially in woman with the maternal instinct characteristic of her s.e.x, than to give a harbor of refuge to the helpless. All nations have respected this instinctive feeling as one of the redeeming traits of human nature and the history of war, at least in modern times, can be searched in vain for any instance in which anyone, especially a woman, has been condemned to death for yielding to the humanitarian impulse of giving temporary refuge to a fugitive soldier.

Such an act is neither espionage nor treason, as those terms have been ordinarily understood in civilized countries.

It is true, as suggested by a few in America who sought to excuse the Cavell crime, that Mrs. Surratt was tried, condemned and executed because she had permitted the band of a.s.sa.s.sins, whose conspiracy resulted in the a.s.sa.s.sination of Lincoln and the attempted murder of Secretary Seward, to hold their meetings in her house; but the difference between this conscious partic.i.p.ation in the a.s.sa.s.sination of the head of the State, in a period of civil war, and the humanitarian aid which Miss Cavell gave to fugitive soldiers to save them from capture is manifest. I am a.s.suming that Miss Cavell did give such protection to her compatriots, for all accessible information supports this view, and if so, however commendable her motive and heroic her conduct, she certainly was guilty of an infraction of military law, which justified some punishment and possibly her forcible detention during the period of the war.

To regard her execution as an ordinary incident of war is an affront to civilization, and as it is symptomatic of the Prussian occupation of Belgium and not a sporadic incident, it acquires a significance which justifies a full recital of this black chapter of Prussianism. It ill.u.s.trates the reign of terror which has existed in Belgium since the German occupation.