He states that she was perfectly calm and resigned throughout the interview, which lasted an hour, and wished all her friends to know that she willingly gave her life for her country.
''I have no fear nor shrinking,'' she said, ''having seen death too often. It is not strange and not fearful. I thank God for this last 10 weeks of quiet before the end. My life has always been hurried and full of difficulty, but standing in view of God and Eternity I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must not cherish hatred nor bitterness for anyone.''
The Dutch newspaper Nieuws Van Den Dag, commenting on Nurse Cavell's recent execution, trusts that world-wide protests will be raised in the name of humanity.
The Westminster Gazette says: ''Every English man and woman will read Nurse Cavell's story with pride at the bravery of a splendid woman scorning subterfuge, and with horror and indignation at the cruelty and lack of chivalry of the Germans in inflicting a savage penalty for a technical offence.''
The Pall Mall Gazette says: ''The moment when a German officer, firing his revolver into the unconscious form of a brave woman, destroyed a life untiringly spent in the service of humanity has compressed into one dramatic picture all that is embodied in the conflict that is convulsing the whole hemisphere. No peace will be tolerable if it failed to ensure the final and complete destruction of a Power that is trampling truth, justice, and mercy under the heel of foul-minded arrogance and insatiable bestiality.''
The Evening News states that Nurse Cavell's murder is the foulest blot of all.
What will stagger the world is the utter inability of the German mind to grasp the effect of a deed so infamous.
The world shudders at the picture of the insensible woman lying on the ground while the murderer took a careful aim.
• The news of the death of Dr W. G. Grace, the world famous cricketer, will occasion a pang of regret, and the thrill that attends fragrant memories of bygone days, in thousands of hearts that are no longer young.
Not only was ''W. G.'' (to use the popular abbreviation) the most celebrated cricketer that ever lived: we should say that his name has been more widely known than that of any other man who has owed his distinction to skill as a sportsman pure and simple.
It would be an exaggeration, no doubt, to assert that his early exploits and his prolonged activity made cricket the national institution it now is; but it would not be such an excessive exaggeration as the younger generation might suppose.
More wonderful, perhaps, than his ability as a player was the length of time during which that ability was maintained.
It was in 1866 that he made his first century in first-class cricket (it was really a double century - 224 not out), and he played his last first-class match more than 40 years later.
• Dr Newman, M. P., speaking at a recruiting meeting on Wednesday evening (reports the Wellington Post), said that he thought it rather mean that some men would not let their own sons go and fight, but were letting other fathers' sons go and fight for them.
He knew of one man who had called his four sons together, and said to them: ''If any one of you goes to the front he won't get a shilling.''
''Of course, he only says that sort of thing in the bosom of his family.''
Mr C. G. Wilson said he thought it was the mothers rather than the fathers who were keeping the boys at home.
They thought it all right for other mothers' boys to go.
But they wouldn't let their own boys go.
• An unusual fish came ashore at Half Moon Bay last week - one about 3ft 6in long.
It was a bonita, very seldom found outside tropical waters, and how it found its way to Stewart Island is a mystery.
It is often caught in warmer latitudes with a piece of red rag from a line suspended from the ship's martingale. - ODT, 25.10.1915.
• COPIES OF PICTURE AVAILABLE FROM ODT FRONT OFFICE, LOWER STUART ST, OR WWW.OTAGOIMAGES.CO.NZ
