As Miss Cavell was a well-known personage in Brussels, it is altogether unlikely that the fact of her arrest and imprisonment would have been unknown to the American Legation in Brussels if the fact of her arrest had been a matter of public information on August 5th or shortly thereafter. In other words, if the arrest had been an open and notorious one, it seems to me unlikely that the American Embassy would have been wholly without information on the subject and when the friends of Miss Cavell found an opportunity to send some information as to her disappearance to the British Foreign Office, it seems unlikely that they would not have given more specific details. Evidently some information had reached the Foreign Office as to Miss Cavell's disappearance, for on August 26th Sir Edward Grey requested the American Ambassador in London to ascertain through the American Legation in Brussels whether it was true that Miss Cavell had been arrested, and it seems clear from the diplomatic correspondence that the American Legation at Brussels knew nothing of the matter until it received this inquiry from the American Ambassador in London. The fact of her arrest by the German military authorities must have been known, but the place of her imprisonment and the nature of the charges against her were apparently withheld. This feature of the case and the manner in which Mr. Brand Whitlock, the American Minister, was prevented from rendering any effective aid to Miss Cavell, presents one aspect of the tragedy which especially concerns the honor and dignity of the United States and should receive its swift and effectual recognition. Her secret trial and hurried execution was a studied affront to the American Minister at Brussels, and therefore to the American nation. It is true that in all he did to save her life he was acting in behalf of and for the benefit of Great Britain, whose interests the United States Government has taken over in Belgium; but this cannot affect the fact that when Brand Whitlock intervened in behalf of the prisoner, sought to secure her a fair trial, and prevent her execution, and especially when he asked her life as a favor in return for the services our country had rendered Germany and German subjects in the earlier days of the war, _he spoke as an American and as the diplomatic representative of the United States_. So secret was Miss Cavell's arrest and so sinister the methods whereby her end was compassed, that the American Minister in Belgium was obliged to write on August 31st to Baron von der Lancken, the German Civil Governor of Belgium, and ask whether it was true that she was under arrest. _To this the German Military Governor did not even deign to make a reply, although it was clearly a matter of life and death._