The Case of Edith Cavell: A Study of the Rights of Non-CombatantsBeck, James M. (James Montgomery)
History
The Case of Edith Cavell: A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants
Beck, James M. (James Montgomery)
Cavell, Edith, 1865-1915
"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 assassin. 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 noble 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 noblest
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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