For one of our Anglo-Saxon race and legal traditions to understand conditions in Belgium during the German occupation, it is necessary to banish resolutely from the mind every conception of right we have inherited from our ancestors--conceptions long since crystallized into inimitable principles of law and confirmed in our charters of liberty. In the German mentality these conceptions do not exist; they think in other sequences; they act according to another principle, if it is a principle, the conviction that there is only one right, one privilege, and that it belongs exclusively to Germany, the right, namely, to do whatever they have the physical force to do. These so-called courts, of whose arbitrary and irresponsible and brutal nature I have tried to convey some notion, were mere inquisitorial bodies, guided by no principle save that of interest in their own bloody nature; they did as they pleased, and would have scorned a Jeffreys as too lenient, a Lynch as too formal, a Spanish _auto da fe_ as too technical, and a tribunal of the French Revolution as soft and sentimental. Before them the accused had literally no rights, not even to present a defense, and if he was permitted to speak in his own behalf, it was only as a generous and liberal favor. It was before such a court that Edith Cavell was to be arraigned. I had asked Maitre de Leval to provide for her defense, and on his advice, inasmuch as Maitre Braun was already of counsel in the case, chosen by certain friends of Miss Cavell, I invited him into consultation. [Sidenote: Personality of Edith Cavell.] [Sidenote: Miss Cavell's character and ability.] Edith Cavell was a frail and delicate little woman about forty years of age. She had come to Brussels some years before the war to exercise her calling as a trained nurse. She soon became known to the leading physicians of the capital and nursed in the homes of the leading families. But she was ambitious, and devoted to her profession, and ere long had entered a nursing-home in the Rue de la Clinique, where she organized for Doctor Depage a training-school for nurses. She was a woman of refinement and education; she knew French as she knew her own language; she was deeply religious, with a conscience almost puritan, and was very stern with herself in what she conceived to be her duty. In her training-school she showed great executive ability, was firm in matters of discipline, and brought it to a high state of efficiency. And every one who knew her in Brussels spoke of her with that unvarying term of respect which her noble character inspired. [Sidenote: Mr. Whitlock engages a defender.] Some time before the trial, Maitre Thomas Braun announced to the Legation that for personal reasons he would be obliged to withdraw from the case, and asked that some one else appear for Miss Cavell. We engaged Maitre Sadi Kirschen. [Sidenote: The court martial in the Senate chamber.]