PUNISHMENT OF GERMANS

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 139, 9 December 1918, Page 7

PUNISHMENT OF GERMANS

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, 16th October. Sir F. E. Smith, Attorney-General, at Liverpool:— "I have given close attention to the subject of international law, and I tell you plainly that there is in international law abundant warrant for the punishment both in thoir persons and in their purses of the proved and identified criminals. It has not been becoming until the hope of victory was recently formed upon the events in the field to" | talk of what we should do when victory ! came. That those persons who can be ! identified with universally admitted acts of outrage are to escape with impunity is a view of the situation which I certainly should find it difficult to accept. We are told it will not fie possible for Germany to pay E indemnities, although she herself is demanding £300,000,000 from the Bolsheviks. There are great assets in Germany, and it is a matter which is irrelevant from one point of view as to whether those assets are pledged by the German Government to the citizens of that country who have supplied the money for the war to be carried on. The relevant answer to the Gorman Government is: 'You have pillaged and destroyed Belgium and ravaged France, and your first obligation is to compensate Belgium and then France and then pay those v.ho put up the money to enable you to commit those outrages.'"