Although time passed somewhat less dully than later, the incidents that, during the winter and summer of 1915, relieved our otherwise monotonous days were of such distressing character that they only deepened the gloom. One by one our British friends were carried off to Rühleben, while their wives were left behind without sufficient means—in some cases absolutely destitute, since they could receive nothing from without, and were consequently worse off than the really impoverished Belgians, for whom charity provided. For months at a stretch, this monotony of misery was broken by nothing more encouraging than bad news from the front, and the tragic events at the _Tir National_, where citizens were shot for patriotic deeds, seldom graver than that of Miss Cavell, or the brave Belgian girl Gabrielle Petit, twenty-one years of age. She, however, was given a chance of having her punishment commuted to imprisonment, but declined this favour which had been denied the Englishwoman. The murder of Miss Cavell caused a pervading mood of mourning that seemed unlikely ever to diminish, even in those who did not know her personally. That crime, so pitilessly carried out, in secrecy and under cover of false promises, was perhaps most appalling to those in the vicinity whose hopes were stimulated by misleading assurances, until the post-mortem announcement proved them vain! Although a British subject has referred to the deed as rather a “blunder” than a crime,—she being proven guilty of having assisted young men across the frontier,—the fact that other women, not British, found guilty of the same humane, although forbidden, acts, were yet spared the extreme punishment reserved for spies and the worst of treason, takes all logic from the argument of this apparently prejudiced Irishman. Edith Cavell’s martyrdom impressed us in Brussels, as it must always impress history, not only as shortsighted stupidity—the very determination, secrecy, and haste with which it was perpetrated contradicts such interpretation—but rather as a deliberate and atrocious act of vengeance toward a hated nation! But other tragedies followed so quickly that this one gradually became lost in the mass of appalling incidents related by relatives of those who suffered, or widely announced in German _affiches_ in order to strike fresh terror to the hearts of a sorrowing and helpless people. Yet hope lived on; despite the prevailing misery, each gleam of good news that reached us from the front was magnified to a great victory for the Allies, and twenty-four hours sufficed to develop the conviction that a glorious and triumphant peace was about to be proclaimed.