Whatever may be the right or the wrong of the case, it is reasonably safe to apply to it the famous dictum of Fouché on Napoleon's execution of the Duc d'Enghien: "It is worse than a crime; it is a blunder." It certainly had the effect of still further embittering the enemies of Germany. Perhaps no incident of the great world war will be more indelibly imprinted on the British mind than this. Many thousands of young Englishmen who had hitherto held back rushed to join the colors. "Edith Cavell Recruiting Meetings" were held all over the United Kingdom. A great national memorial service was held in St. Paul's Cathedral in London, where representatives of the king and queen, statesmen, the nobility and thousands of officers and soldiers attended. The Dowager Queen Alexandra, who is the patron of the great institution now in course of erection and known as the "Queen Alexandra Nurses' Training School," expressed the desire that her name should give place to that of Miss Cavell, and that the institution shall be called "The Edith Cavell Nurses' Training School."
Within a month of her death it had been decided to erect a statue to the memory of Miss Cavell in Trafalgar Square. Sir George Frampton, R.A., President of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, undertook to execute the statue without charge.
The most permanent memorial of the death of Nurse Cavell will be a snow-clad peak in the Rocky Mountains, which the Canadian Government has decided to name "Mount Cavell." It is situated fifteen miles south of Jasper, on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, near the border of Alberta, at the junction of the Whirlpool and Athabasca Rivers, and has a height of more than 11,000 feet.
A curious sequel followed the execution of Miss Cavell. Nearly three months later, on January 6, 1916, a young Belgian was found shot dead in Schaerbeek, a suburb of Brussels. The German authorities took the matter in hand for investigation, but in the meantime General von Bissing fined the city of Brussels 500,000 marks and the suburb of Schaerbeek 50,000 marks on the plea that the murder had been committed with a revolver, the Germans having ordered that all arms should be surrendered at the town hall. But there was more in this affair than an ordinary crime. The "Écho Belge," published in Amsterdam since the German occupation of Belgium, revealed that the punitive action by the German authorities was prompted by something other than an infringement of the regulations. The body found was that of a certain Niels de Rode, and he it was who denounced Miss Cavell and also betrayed several Belgians--his own countrymen--who were trying to cross the frontier to join the army. The "Écho Belge" asserted that De Rode was executed by Belgian patriots to avenge the betrayal of Miss Cavell. The anger of the German authorities was explained by the loss of their informer.