The news scimitar. (Memphis, Tenn.) 1907-1926, 1918-11-07
For War to Victory

entangle not thy heart with
any creature.
81 PIT were more just that thou
shouldst accuse myself and Ok
cuse thy Brother.
Just before the end, too. as / have
said, she wrote a number of letters.
She forgot no one; among the letters
that she left was one addressed to the
nurses OF her school, and there was a
message for a girl who was trying to
break herself Of the morphine habit;
Miss Cavell had been trying to help
her and she sent word to be brave. and
that II God would permit she would
continue to try to help her.
1t was on Oct. 10, 1915, already con-
demned to death, that Miss Cavell wrote
the letter Of farewell to her nurses. The
letter was in French, for all the nurses
were Belgian girls, and in 1t, after ex-
pressing the sorrow she felt in bidding
adteu to her pupils, she wrote of the
joy she had in being called on the 18th
Brussels the first school Of graduate
nurses in Belgium. At that time nurs-
Ing had not been made a science in
Belgium as it had been in England and
IN America; the graduate nurse was un-
known, DIR. Depage, one Of the leading
physicians in Belgium, one of the lead
ing physicians indeed in the world, had
been anxious that such a school be
founded, and 1t was through his %inspira-
ton and that of his wife that the
school was made possible. They NC
ceeded In interesting a number of influ-
entail men and women in Brussels, Ant
werp, Bfuges, Liege and Mons in the
project, a society was formed and
Madame Ernest SOlvay gave to the
school the sum of 5000 0 francs with
which was built the model hospital and
training school for nurses that stands
now in the rue de Bruxelles in UcCle.
The building had 50 rooms for nurses
and 30 rooms for patients, study halls,
theaters for operations and represented
the ideas of Dr.. Depage, of Madame
Depage and Of Miss Cavell.
The building was completed in the
month of May, 1915, the very month
that Madame Depage went down on the
Lusitania, and five months before Miss
Cavell was killed, and by the operation
OF the old irOnic rule of life neither of
the two women most concerned in it
and most responsible for 1t ever saw
the school they had founded and estab-
ltshed in 1t. Miss Cayell, in organizing
and establishing the school, encoun-
Ntered very real difficulties in those first
years, for, as she says in her letter,
tout etait nouveau dams cette profess
sion pour la Belgique." She was evil
IDENTIFY a woman Of great force of will
and OF nervous energy; she had a high
intelligence and q profound character,
ol.u slo !SuCCeeueu snG esLdDliSIleu tne
school, she established nursing in Bel
GUM, and her name and that of Mad
anne Depage, both victims of German
frightfulness, will ever Be associated
with the school at Brussels.
The letter which sounds the profound
depths of the Anglo-SaXon character
with its stern command Of emotion and
feeling, though all the while deep down
there Is an affection that somehow
fears to express itself, somehow sums
up tho character that made a noble
and devoted life. When one thinks that
there in her cell behind the grim walls
Of the prison of St. GILES this frail
woman sat down and in a firm hand,
and in a foreign language. almost with
out n fault, wrote such a letter as this,
one understands something of her ma
ture. She gives a glimpse Of the diff
Culties she had to overcome to found
her school in a peculiarly conservative
nlilieu where all was new and strange.
Shc remembers some OF the obscure
in III, souls of those whom she was
directing, She had been u strong dis
clrlinarian, a self-contained nature
which she had completely mastered,
sternest always with herself, and In
asking those girls, who may not always
have understood her, to forgive what
they may have considered her Bsverity,
she ends with the touching confession
that she loved them more than they
knew.
Letter to Her Nurses.
Prison of st. GILES.
my Dear Nurses-It is a very sad
moment for me when l write to make