"Fraulein Cavell"

Not in anger, not in malice, came measured words of protest, last week, from His Excellency Dr. Gustav Sthamer, German Ambassador to the Court of George V.

"Not accurate! Not true to history!" boomed Dr. Sthamer, protesting the British-made cinema drama Dawn, depicting the life of Edith Cavell and shortly to be released. At such words Britons bristled. What was not accurate? Did any German, even the Ambassador, dare to question such authentic, stirring sequences as that, for example, in which Nurse Cavell, when led out to execution, dashes aside the proffered bandage for her eyes, and stands, chin up and fearless, before a German firing squad of eight?

Ambassador Sthamer quietly documented his protest, last week, by producing the official German account of the execution: ". . . Soldiers brought Fraulein Cavell from a neighboring house. Her eyes were bandaged and a black veil was placed over her head. While being led to the wall she tottered and fell in a faint, whereupon an officer, kneeling to aim, shot her. . . . She never faced the firing squad. . . ."

Though the German and British accounts are thus irreconcilable, the discrepancy grows less as the British account (and film) proceeds from the point at which Nurse Cavell stands flashing-eyed before the squad.

Next comes a sequence in which one of the German soldiers in the squad refuses to fire and is promptly shot by his officer for so refusing. At the sound.of this shot the cinema Nurse Cavell faints and is shot by a soldier as she lies unconscious.

At Berlin, last week, the Tagliche Rundschau, which often speaks for Foreign Minister Dr. Gustav Stresemann, thundered: ". . . Unpardonable distortion of the circumstances of Fraulein Cavell's death. . . . Let us hope that the British Government will find a way to suppress the film."

So furious waxed the German protest that the British Foreign Office finally informed the British Board of Film Censors that the licensing and release of Dawn would be "most objectionable." While the Board was expected to follow this hint, British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain thought it necessary to clarify his personal views in an announcement made by his private secretary:

"The story of Nurse Cavell is a very noble one.

"It may be possible to present such a story pictorially without loss of its beauty and danger of controversy when the lapse of years has made it history, but for himself Sir Austen feels it is more beautiful in memory than any picture could make it. He must frankly say that he feels the strongest repugnance to its cinema production."