From the same source the world gets its only information as to the exact law which Miss Cavell was accused of violating. Paragraph 58 of the German Military Code inflicts a sentence of death upon "any person who, with the intention of helping the hostile power, or of causing harm to the German or allied troops, is guilty of one of the crimes of paragraph 90 of the German Penal Code," and the only pertinent section of paragraph 90, according to the same informant, is the specific offence of "guiding soldiers to the enemy" (in German--"Dem Feinde Mannschaften zufuehrt"). I affirm with confidence that under this law Miss Cavell was innocent, and that the true meaning of the law was perverted in order to inflict the death sentence upon her. I admit that a general and strained construction of the language above quoted might be applicable to a defendant who gave refuge to hostile soldiers in Brussels and thus enabled them to escape across the frontier into Holland and thence into a belligerent country, but every penal law must receive a construction that is favorable to the defendant and agreeable to the dictates of humanity. Every civilized country construes its penal laws in favour of the liberty of the subject, and no punishment, especially one of death, is ever imposed unless the offence charged comes indubitably within a rigid construction of the law. Keeping in mind this elementary principle, it is obvious that the offense of guiding soldiers to the enemy refers to the physical act of guiding a fugitive soldier back into his lines. A soldier becomes detached from his lines. He finds shelter in a farm house. The farmer, knowing the roads, secretly guides him back into his lines, and this obviously is the offence which paragraph 90 had in mind, for the German word "zufuehrt" refers to a personal guidance. Miss Cavell simply gave shelter to soldiers and in some way facilitated their escape to Holland. Holland is a neutral country, and it was its duty to intern any fugitive soldiers who might escape from any one of the belligerent countries. The fact that these soldiers subsequently reached England is a matter that could not increase or diminish the essential nature of Miss Cavell's case. She enabled them to get to a neutral country, and this was not a case of "guiding soldiers to the enemy," for Holland was not an enemy of Germany.