WAR CRIMINALS

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 52, 2 March 1921, Page 7

WAR CRIMINALS

SEVEN OFFICERS TO BE TRIED.

(UKITSD FRIES ASSOCIATION.—COPTRIOITO

UfftTRALMN-HEW mLANB CAM ASBBCUTION.; LONDON, 28th February. Sir George Hewitt (Attorney-General) in the House of Commons, in, reply to a question, said he had had an interview with the German representatives respect, ing the trial of severi German officers at Leipzig. It was hoped the trial would "begin a month hence. It was proposed to have British representatives present.

[To provide the necessary machinery for the punishment of war criminals a special law wnt passed in Berlin in December, 1919. The first trial under this statute took place before the Beiohsgericht at .Leipzig 'on 10th January. However, the defendants were not any of the mor« or less prominent officers enumerated on the Allies' indictment lists, but three obscure Pioneer soldiers, and their offence was committed on 30th October, 1918, when the demoralisation of the German Army was already far advanced. They were charged with having on that day" forcibly broken into an inn at Edingen, near Lille, chased the proprietor out of his house by threats of death, and looted the dwelling-rooms. An officer who happened to come up with a handful of soldiers placed them under arrest. The prisoners were- convicted, and sentenced respectively to five, four, and two years' imprisonment. The object of the Gorman authorities in occupying the .Reichgericht with this case is not quite clear (eaye a- correspondent in London Daily Telegraph). On the surface their action looks rather like a bad joke. The Socialistic press is, of course, scornful on the subject, and wants to know why "hundreds of officers of the high or low nobility who committed crimes far worse than those of the soldiers condemned at Leipzig are still Tunning about with impunity."]