It is true, as suggested by a few in America who sought to excuse the Cavell crime, that Mrs. Surratt was tried, condemned, and executed because she had permitted the band of assassins, whose conspiracy resulted in the assassination of Lincoln and the attempted murder of Secretary Seward, to hold their meetings in her house; but the difference between this alleged conscious participation in the assassination of the head of the State in a period of civil war, and the humanitarian aid which Miss Cavell gave to fugitive soldiers to save them from capture or possibly to effect their escape, is manifest. I am assuming that Miss Cavell did give such protection to her compatriots, for all accessible information supports this view, and if so, however commendable her motive and heroic her conduct, she was guilty of an infraction of military law, which justified some punishment and possibly her forcible detention during the period of the war.

To regard her execution for this offence as an ordinary incident of war is an affront to civilization, and as it is symptomatic of the Prussian occupation of Belgium and not a sporadic incident, it acquires a significance which justifies a full recital of this black chapter of Prussianism. It illustrates

the reign of terror which has existed in Belgium since the German occupation.

When the German Chancellor made his famous speech in the Reichstag on August 4, 1914, and admitted at the bar of the world the crime which was then being initiated, he said:

The wrong-I speak openly-that we are committing we will endeavour to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached.

Within a few weeks the military goal was reached by the seizure of practically all of Belgium and by the voluntary surrender of Brussels to the invader, and since then, for a period of over two years, the Belgian people have been subjected to a state of tyranny for which we must turn to find a parallel to the history of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century and recall its occupation by the Duke of Alva. It must be said in candour that the Prussian occupation of Belgium has not yet caused as many victims as the "Bloody Council" of the Duke of Alva, for the estimated number of non-combatants, who have been shot in Belgium during the last two dreadful years, is only 6000 as against the 18,000 whom it is estimated the Spanish General put to death.

It may also be the fact that the present oppres

sion of Belgium is marked by some approach to the forms of law; but it may be doubted whether the difference is not more in appearance than in reality, for the administration of law in Belgium has been a mockery. Of this there can be no more striking or detailed proof than the protest which was presented to the German authorities on February 17, 1915, by M. Léon Théodor, the head of the Brussels bar. The truth of this formal accusation may be fairly measured by the strong probability that the brave leader of the Brussels bar would never have ventured to have made the statements hereinafter referred to to the German Military Governor unless he was reasonably sure of his facts. What he said on behalf of the bar of Brussels was said in the shadow of possible death, and if he had consciously or deliberately maligned the Prussian administration of justice in this open and specific manner, he assuredly took his life into his hands. This brave and noble document will forever remain one of the gravest indictments of Prussian misrule and as it states, on the authority of one who was in a position to know, the details of the savage tyranny which masqueraded under the forms of law, a part of it may be profitably quoted.

After stating the fact "that everything about

the German judicial organization in Belgium is contrary to the principles of law," and after showing that Belgian civilians were punished for violations of law, which had never been proclaimed and of which, therefore, the condemned knew nothing, the distinguished President of the Order of Advocates says:

This absence of certainty is not only the negation of all the principles of law; it weighs on the mind and on the conscience; it bewilders one, it seems to be a permanent menace for all, and the danger is all the more real, because these courts permit neither public nor defensive procedure, nor do they permit the accused to receive any communication regarding his case, nor is any right of defence assured him.

This is arbitrary injustice; the Judge left to himself, that is, to his impressions, his prejudices, and his surroundings. This is abandoning the accused in his distress, to grapple alone with his all-powerful adversary.

This justice, uncontrolled, and consequently without guarantee, constitutes for us the most dangerous and oppressive of illegalities. We cannot conceive justice as a judicial or moral possibility without free defence.

Free defence, that is, light thrown on all the elements of the suit; public sentiment being heard in the bosom of the judgment hall, the right to say everything in the most respectful manner, and also the courage to dare everything, these must be put at the service of the unfortunate one, of justice and

law. It is one of the greatest conquests of our history. It is the keystone of our individual liberty.

What are your sources of information?

Besides the judges, the men of the Secret Service and the denouncers (in French: délateurs).

The Secret Service men in civilian clothes, not bearing any insignia, mixing with the crowds in the street, in the cafés, on the platforms of street cars, listen to the conversations carried on around them, ready to grasp any secret, on the watch not only for

acts but for intentions.

These denouncers of our nation are ever multiplying. What confidence can be placed in their declarations, inspired by hate, spite, or low cupidity? Such assistants can bring to the cause of justice no useful collaboration.

If we add to this total absence of control and of defence, these preventive arrests, the long detentions, the searches in the private domiciles, we will have an almost complete idea of the moral tortures to which our aspirations, our convictions, and our liberties are subjected at the present time.

Will it be said that we are living under martial law; that we are submitting to the hard necessities of war; that all should give way before the superior interests of your armies?

I can understand martial law for armies in the field. It is the immediate reply to an aggression against the troops, repression without words, the summary justice of the commander of the army responsible for his soldiers. But our armies are far away; we are no longer in the zone of military operations. Nothing here menaces your troops, the inhabitants are calm.