CHAPTER V.
THE COMING OF THE GERMANS.
We reach now the last year of Edith Cavell’s life, for which all the others had been a preparation. When she arrived in Brussels, the Germans were shelling Liége. The gallant little Belgium Army stood drawn up across the path of the invaders. It was believed that the French and British would soon arrive to drive the Germans back. The Belgian Government was still in Brussels. Cheery Burgomaster Max kept order with his Civic Guard. In the autumn of 1915 we are all wiser.
Miss Cavell has herself described, in an article sent home to the Nursing Mirror, how the bitter truth came home to Brussels:—
Brussels lay that evening [August 20th] breathless with anxiety. News came that the Belgians, worn out and weary, were unable to hold back the oncoming host who might be with us that night. Still we clung to the hope that the English Army was between us and the unseen peril....
In the evening came the news that the enemy were at the gates. At midnight bugles were blowing, summoning the Civic Guard to lay down their arms and leave the city. Many people were up through the dark hours, and all doors and windows were tightly shut. As we went to bed our only consolation was that in God’s good time right and justice must prevail.
The sympathies of Nurse Cavell were all with the Belgians and their Allies. How could it be otherwise? Yet, when the Germans came she spoke with sympathy of the tired and footsore men in the enemy’s host:—
On August 21st [she wrote] many more troops came through; from our road we could see the long procession, and when the halt was called at midday and carts came up with supplies some were too weary to eat, and slept on the pavement of the street.
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.