rdinary courtesy accorded to the vilest criminal, of being
permitted before dying to have a clergyman of her own selection, was
denied her until a few hours before her death, for the legal counselor
of the American Legation on October 10th applied in behalf of this
country for permission for an English clergyman to see Miss Cavell, and
this, too, was refused, as her jailers preferred to assign her the
prison chaplains as well as her counsel. Even the final appeal of our
Minister for the surrender of her mutilated body was denied, on the
ground that only the Minister of War in Berlin could grant it.

Apart from the brutality of the whole incident there is one circumstance
that makes it of peculiar interest to the American people and which
gives to it the character of rank ingratitude. Our representative, as
above stated, did advise the German officials that a little delay was
asked by our Legation _as a slight return for the innumerable acts of
kindness which our Legation had done for German soldiers and interned
prisoners in the earlier days of the war before the German invasion had
swept over the land_. The charge of ingratitude may rest soundly upon
far greater and broader grounds.

This great nation had contributed in money and merchandise a sum
estimated at many millions for the relief of the people in Belgium. In
so doing it did to the German nation an inestimable service, for when
Germany conquered Belgium the duty and burden rested upon it to support
its population to the extent that it might become necessary. The burden
of supporting 8,000,000 civilians was no light one, especially as there
existed in Germany a scarcity of food. As bread tickets were then being
issued in Germany to its people, the supplies would have been
substantially less if a portion of its food products had been required
for the civilian population of Belgium, for obviously the German nation
could not permit a people, whom it had so ruthlessly trampled under
foot, to starve to death. Every dollar that was raised in America for
the Belgian people, therefore, operated to relieve Germany from a heavy
burden.

Moreover, when the war broke out, Germany needed some friendly nation to
take over the care of its nationals in the hostile countries, and in
England, France, Belgium, and Russia the interests of German citizens
were assumed by the American Government as a courtesy to Germany, and no
one can question how faithfully in the last fourteen m