The war is about to start and Dr Schultz suggests Nurse Cavell return home but she refuses, saying her place is with the sick.

Herr Cries is also invited; he pretends to be a medical student but is in fact a foreign spy and is a rejected suitor of Yvonne.

She advises her to send her husband to the Café Française and give the password "Liberty" to Monsieur Fouchard, the proprietor, in exchange for false passports.

Searching the hospital, Cries finds a letter of gratitude from England incriminating Nurse Cavell for assisting another prisoner of war to escape.

"[8][9] John Gavin got the idea to make the film after reading a newspaper story about Cavell's death.

Agnes Gavin wrote the script overnight and finance was obtained from two leading distributors, J. D. Williams and the partnership of Stanley Crick and Jones.

[10] Eleven stone Mason had a fight scene with 18 stone Gavin, which Mason's character was required to win; in order to make this believable, the script was rewritten to have Ethel Bashford's character come in and smash Gavin over the head with a vase.

The Motion Picture News wrote during production that "I am off the opinion that it will be one of the usual war dramas.

"[15] Australian Prime Minister William Hughes sent a letter to Mason prior to the film's release, stating that: I shall certainly be pleased to see the Photo-play dealing with the Martyrdom and execution of Nurse Cavell, which you propose to produce shortly; but I'm very much afraid that I shall not be able to do so, seeing that in the course of a few days I shall be leaving Australian for London and will be absent for some little time.

I wish the venture success, and hope it may be the medium of impressing on people the dreadful inhumanity of our enemy.

"[16]The film was given a preview in front of several notables in January 1916, including the Governor General and acting Prime Minister.

The critic wondered, "It is open to question, however, whether the last rites of the church were such as to make it necessary for the nurse before her execution to kiss a cross to which is attached the rosary beads.

Miss Vera Pearce, who plays the nurse with much womanly grace and dignity, is surprisingly good if a trifle too statuesque.

Mr. George Portus, who only appears for a minute or so, makes a sufficiently convincing doctor...In the story as faked there are many improbabilities...