Answer:
At this time, women were not viewed as capable of carrying out spy activities.
Step-by-step explanation:
The most important inference we can make based on this excerpt is that women were not viewed as capable of carrying out spy activities. In the passage, we see that Elizabeth van Lew was able to walk around the hospital and talk to the prisoners. If van Lew had been a man, it is unlikely she would have been allowed to be so close to the soldiers. However, her alibi was believable (women were very involved in spy activities) and no one suspected she could be a spy because of her gender.