We were divided between pity for these poor fellows far from their country and their people, suffering the weariness and fatigue of an arduous campaign, and hate of a cruel and vindictive foe bringing ruin and desolation on hundreds of happy homes and to a prosperous and peaceful land. Some of the Belgians spoke to the invaders in German, and found they were very vague as to their whereabouts, and imagined they were already in Paris; they were surprised to be speaking to Belgians, and could not understand what quarrel they had with them. I saw several of the men pick up little children and give them chocolate or seat them on their horses, and some had tears in their eyes at the recollection of the little ones at home. From that date till now we have been cut off from the world.... The German nurses training under Miss Cavell had already left--conducted to the frontier by her to save them the anxiety of being in an enemy capital. At this time the German soldiers were ruthlessly slaughtering Belgian women and children. The new authorities approved of her continuing her work: no longer, since the outbreak of war, a training institution, but a Red Cross Hospital. It is admitted even by her enemies that she threw herself ardently into her work without respect of nationality. Wounded Belgians and Germans were treated alike. Many German officers passed through her hands. There is now in hospital in England a wounded Belgian who knew Miss Cavell in Brussels in those first days of the German occupation, and who speaks of the universal affection in which she was held. CHAPTER VI WEAVING THE NET. The full story of the next few months of Edith Cavell’s life cannot be told until after the war is over. Brussels, as she had written, became cut off from the world. The hospitable old city became a nest of spies. “Newspapers were first stopped, then suppressed, and are now printed under German auspices. The few trains that run for passengers are in German hands, and wherever you go you must have, and pay for, a passport. No one speaks to his neighbour in the tram, for he may be a spy. Besides, what news is there to tell, and who has the heart to gossip, and what fashions are there to speak of, and who ever goes to a concert or a theatre nowadays, and who would care to tell of their all-absorbing anxiety as to how to make ends meet and spin out the last of the savings, or to keep the little mouths at home filled, with the stranger close by?” The frank, open nature of Edith Cavell was ill-fitted for such an atmosphere of fear and deception. Everyone was “suspect,” as in the days of the Paris Terror in 1793. It was enough, as then, to fall under “suspicion of being suspect.” Edith Cavell was suspected, and cunning men sought how they might weave a net of accusation around her.