Wednesday, September 22, 2010

CAVELL, EDITH

Conventional distaste of the employment of women as agents in wartime and concern about placing them in great personal danger were exploited in October 1915 when a British nurse, Edith Cavell, was sentenced to death by  the German occupation forces in Belgium after she had confessed to assisting the escape of Allied soldiers to neutral Holland. Her execution by a firing squad created a worldwide revulsion and was a propaganda triumph  for the British.