[Illustration: _Frontispiece._ [_By the courtesy of the Illustrated London News._ NURSE CAVELL.] _The Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell._ [Illustration] _The Life Story of the Victim of Germany’s Most Barbarous Crime._ _By William Thomson Hill._ [Illustration] _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS._ [Illustration] _LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO._ _PATERNOSTER ROW_ ᛭ 1915 NURSE CAVELL’S LAST MESSAGE TO THE WORLD. “But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness to anyone.” LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. =The latest portrait of Nurse Cavell.= (_From Photo Copyright Farringdon Photo Company_) (_see cover_) =Nurse Cavell= (_Photo by courtesy of Illustrated London News_) _Frontispiece_ =The Rev. Frederick Cavell, father of Nurse Cavell.= (_Daily Mirror Photograph_) _facing page_ =16= =Mrs. Cavell, mother of Nurse Cavell.= (_Daily Mirror Photograph_) ” =17= =Nurse Cavell when a child, with her mother and elder sister.= (_Photo Copyright Farringdon Photo Company_) ” =32= =The Rectory, Swardeston, where Nurse Cavell was born.= (_Daily Mirror Photograph_) ” =33= =Nurse Cavell in her garden.= (_Daily Mirror Photograph_) ” =48= =Nurse Cavell, from a photograph taken in Brussels.= (_Photo Copyright Farringdon Photo Company_) ” =49= CHAPTER I. CHILDHOOD. In the early seventies there were living at the country rectory of Swardeston, near Norwich, a clergyman and his wife and little family. There was a “New” and an “Old” Rectory. Both are still standing, much as they were then, except that the trees are older, and the “New” Rectory has long ago lost any signs of newness. It is one of the ways of Old England to call some of its most ancient things New, as if it could never learn to tolerate change kindly, even after centuries of wont. There is a Newtimber Place in Sussex whose walls were built before the Armada. There is a New Building in Peterborough Cathedral which was completed before the Reformation. New Shoreham took the place of Old Shoreham before Magna Charta was signed. The Rector, the Rev. Frederick Cavell, lived with his family at the New Rectory. It is a pleasant sunny house with a large garden. Such parsonages are common in all the unspoiled rural parts of England. A little gate leads to the churchyard close by.