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Press, Volume LV, Issue 16515, 10 June 1919, Page 6

Recent London papers contain brief reports of tlie proceedings of the German Commission of Enquiry into alleged broaches, of . international law, when considering the execution of Captain Fryatt. Tho Commission, as was cabled at the time, found that tho execution constituted no such breach, inasmuch as the court-martial procedure and the provisions of German military law were correctly observed. It was just such a finding as might have beenexpected, and the expression of regret at the summary nature of the execution docs not mitigate its gross perversion of justice. The whole proceedings, we are told, were as unsatisfactory as they wcrft ridiculous. The only witnesses were tho accused themselves and their expert supporters, wl:o bullied tho Commission. The only voice raisod by a German against a verdict which white- i washed the perpetrators of one of the foulest murders committed during tho war was that of Captain Persius, the ablo writer on naval affairs, who declared that it showed that the present mentality of the German posples differs in no respect from that of old Germany. It was the duty of every honourable ' man, ho added, to protest against the : judgment as neither in the interest of \ humanity nor of the German people. Captain Fryatt, it will bo remember- ] ed. when commanding the steamer \ Brussels, encountered a German sub- j marine in the North Sea. The U-boat i signalled him to stop, but Captain > b'ryntt, instead of obeying tho order, ' tried to ram his enemy. How nearly f lie succeeded was not known until tho x :ommander of the submarine (which ( eventually captured the Brussels and r took her into po; t) gave evidence at tho t inquiry mentioned above. "Owing," * le said, "to a mistake on the part of ( my subordinate in diving instead of ° lodging, Fryatt nearly sank me by a y laring manoeuvre. For some minutes i; ve gave ourselves up for lost. At that t ;tnge of the war our subina:ines wero no n natch for a swift steamer in the hands a if a bravo man." Alth ugh in tho vie.v >f German jurists it was unlawful for a w aaroKautmaa to resist a war&hip. Cod- S

tain Fryatt might possibly have escapec ! being done to death had he not pre- | viously been successful in ramming i U-boat. A dby sheer irony it was the | inscribed gold watch presented to hin: by the British Admiralty in recognitor of that feat, which contributed the mosl damning evidence against him in the eyes of his judges. -—$ —' Another matter into which the Com mission enquired was the treatment ol prisoners of war at the infamous Wittenberg priscn camp, where Russ'an prisoners suffering from typhus were con- ; grcgated in narrow quarters with num bers of English and French prisoners, w'th the inevitable result that manj died. The chief medical officer was an inhuman cowardly brute, who gave th« sufferers a minimum of attention, and then only at a safe distance, and the | camp was lacking in practically everyI thing .that was ncccssary to fight the I epidemic. If it had not been for the heroic exertions of two or throe British I doctors, of whom two lost their lives, | the consequences of the German neg'ect I would have been even worse. In this j case, again, the Commission fnund that | nn breach of international law had been committed, and a tually commended ths medical officer, who, it was alleged, was ill at tho time. After this example of impartiality, the exoneration of the German sentry, who ki led three French prisoners at Mannheim camp, on the ground that he had been in a nerve hospital and was sufforng frrm nerves, was quite in the ordinary course of things.