AUSTRALIAN DEMAND

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 56, 4 September 1945, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN DEMAND

ARREST OF JAPANESE WAR CRIMINALS

(Special P.A. Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, September 3

The Minister of External Affairs, Dr. Evatt, is to leave for England by air tomorrow to represent Australia on the Council of Foreign Ministers. It is expected that he will raise directly with members of the British Government the question of Australia's dissatisfaction that no Japanese war criminals have yet been arrested. The Australian Government's feeling on this subject was made evident by Dr. Evatt's statement that Australia would "not let the Japanese criminals get away with anything." The Australian Government in the last few days has exerted strong pressure on the United States and British Governments for the arrest of Japanese war criminals and, according to an officer of the Department of External Affairs, will continue to do so. The Government's views have also been communicated to General Mao Arthur and the United Nations War Crimes Commission. Publication of the accounts of Japanese atrocities and the ill treatment inflicted on Australian and other Allied prisoners of war has aroused wide support for the Government's attitude.

Lieutenant-General Gordon Bennett, former Commander-in-Chief of the A.I.F. Bth Division, said: "The punishment cannot be too severe for those who indulged in an animal lust for cruelty and terrorism." Mr. H. R. Redding, general secretary of the Australian Natives' Association, said:. "All Australians will back the Government's protests to the last angry syllable. ' Kid-glove methods are wasted on the Japanese."

PERVERTED RELIGION

While agreeing that the guilty men of Japan must be brought to justice, the "Daily Telegraph" says that vengeance alone is useless. "We would do little for the future peace of the Pacific if we failed to realise that the Japanese bestiality is a form of perverted religion," says the paper in an editorial. "All the trials in the world will not help unless we can succeed in re-educating. Japanese youth along entirely opposite lines. "No matter how great the temptation, we shall not achieve this if we think more of vengeance than of correction. We cannot kill 70,000,000 Japanese, and we have to live in the same ocean with them. We must therefore try to make them fit to live with. To do that we have to weed out every shred of influence by the military caste, who have been moulding the bodies and minds of a slave nation.

"The tendency will be to punish and forget. The Japanese war lord can take the punishment and exploit the forgetfulness. Our determination must be to eradicate the war lord and his creed, and to remember long enough to see Japan converted to a peaceful neighbour in a prosperous Pacific."

The importance the Government attaches to a proper expression of Australia's external policy is such that there is no option to Dr. Evatt leaving for London forthwith.

The Prime Minister, Mr. Chifley, in a statement on the Minister's task, said: "Dr. Evatt has undertaken several very successful wartime missions abroad on behalf of the Government. His present mission will be of even greater importance because of the bearing it will have on the final peace settlement and on the security not only of Australia in the Pacific but also of the whole world."