he
offense of guiding soldiers to the enemy refers to the physical act of
guiding a fugitive soldier back into his lines. A soldier becomes
detached from his lines. He finds shelter in a farm house. The farmer,
knowing the roads, secretly guides him back into his lines, and this
obviously is the offence which paragraph 90 had in mind, for the German
word "zufuehrt" refers to a personal guidance.

Miss Cavell simply gave shelter to soldiers and in some way facilitated
their escape to Holland. Holland is a neutral country, and it was its
duty to intern any fugitive soldiers who might escape from any one of
the belligerent countries. The fact that these soldiers subsequently
reached England is a matter that could not increase or diminish the
essential nature of Miss Cavell's case. She enabled them to get to a
neutral country, and this was not a case of "guiding soldiers to the
enemy," for Holland was not an enemy of Germany.

This fact must have impressed the Military Court, for according to the
same informant it did not at once agree upon either the verdict of
"Guilty" or the judgment of death, and it is stated that the Judges
would not have sentenced her to death if the fugitive soldiers, who had
crossed into Holland, had not subsequently arrived in England. But it
will astound any lawyer to learn that the subsequent escape of these
same prisoners from Holland to England could be reasonably regarded as a
guidance by Miss Cavell of these soldiers _to England_. In all
probability Miss Cavell had little or nothing to do with these soldiers
after they left Brussels, but even assuming that she provided the means
and gave the directions for their escape across the frontier between
Belgium and Holland, that was "the head and front of her offending," and
it does not come within the law under which she was sentenced to death.

When she was asked by her Judges as to her reasons for sheltering these
fugitives, "she replied that she thought that if she had not done so
_they would have been shot by the Germans_ and that therefore she
thought she only did her duty to her country in saving their lives."

This fairly states what she did, and perhaps this brave and frank reply
caused her death. She gave a temporary shelter to men who were in danger
of death, and, as previously stated, in so doing yielded to a
humanitarian impulse which all civilized nations have recognized as
worthy of the most lenient treatment.

When, therefore, H