'Indeed, to all Germans who have not been corrupted by Prussian militarism, the hurried, stealthy shooting of hapless Edith Cavell in the dead of night behind prison walls will always be a bitter memory. More than all the counts in the Bryce Report of atrocities in Belgium it will weigh in the scale of judgement, for it has struck the world with horror.' _The Tribune._ 'Alive, Miss Cavell was but an offender against German military rules; dead, dead after summary conviction, dead under circumstances that give the incident the character of a midnight assassination and the colour of an atrocity, she becomes to all men of English blood a martyr and an inspiration to new patriotic devotion. 'The thing is like the Zeppelin raids, it is like the Louvain slaughter, it is like the _Lusitania_ massacre. The wrongs done to the women and children of a race do not terrify the men. They only serve to rouse the spirit, strengthen the arm, nerve the will. "Terribleness" is but the emptiest of threats and the weakest of weapons. There is something almost pathetic in the German dullness to the things that move the world. It begs, whines, pleads for the goodwill and the approval of neutral mankind. It stands almost as a suppliant for the alms of approval of other races. But in the same moment, without warning, without reason, without anything but an incomprehensible stupidity and folly, it does something that shocks the moral sense, the humanity, of men and women the world over.' _Philadelphia Public Ledger._ 'The Administration has a duty in this matter which it should not overlook. Miss Cavell, as a British subject, was under the protection of the American Legation. The American Minister made both an official and a personal request that her life might be spared. This request was not only refused, it was treated with contempt. Mr. Gibson's report is scrupulously restrained in language, but his indignation may easily be read between the lines. The sentence was carried out with a haste that emphasizes the insults to the United States; the procedure from the beginning was marked by insolence to its representatives. To let the matter drop here would be a confession that this country can neither protect its citizens' interests, nor those of other nations whose interests it has undertaken to guard.' _The Baltimore Sun._ 'It is difficult to speak in temperate language of the execution of Edith Cavell. ... The world will pronounce this one of the crowning atrocities of cold-blooded brutality. It is impossible to think of it without horror, to speak of it without execration.' _The Chicago Tribune._