NOT MERE RETALIATION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 23 March 1945, Page 3

NOT MERE RETALIATION

TUNISHMENT OF WAR CRIMINALS London, March 21. I The Three Power decision at Moscow I conference regarding the trial of war criminals was reaffirmed on behalf of Britain by the Lord Chancellor, Viscount Simon, to-day when the trial and punishment of war criminals was discussed in the House of Lords. Lord Addison asked the Government what progress was being made by the War Crimes Commission and the nature of proceedings to secure the punishment of such major criminals as Hitler and Mussolini.

Viscount Maugham said criminals within any definition of war crimes ran into not hundreds or thousands, but millions. The vast number of atrocities included a third of the Germans in this war. He begged those responsible for the trials to pause before they got principles so wide that millions of people would be held to be criminals and persons who ought to be tried for offences escaped.

Viscount Cecil said if major war criminals were put on trial for political offences it would give them an opportunity for using the trials as a platform from which they could preach their seditious doctrines. He hoped they would be tried for crimes, not political offences.

Lord Wright, chairman of the United Nations War Crimes Commission, said it was necessary for the commission to work in secrecy because of reprisals the Germans might carry out. The commission had compiled lists of war criminals which had been sent to military forces through the Government and the army received the lists as warrants to apprehend the persons named in them. The commission was not a vindictive body. Major criminals would not be tried as political offenders but as murderers, assassins, torturers and the like.

Lord Simon, replying, said the Government had given the closest consideration not merely to major criminals but to small criminals. The real offence which the whole free world knew had been committed by major criminals was not limited by the war period. The question of procedure for dealing with major war criminals would be one of the matters Mr Eden would discuss at an early date. He added: “I regard this question of dealing with war criminals as something very much more than mere retaliation upon our enemies. If such things as have been done can be done in the face of heaven and if humanity is not capable of effectively dealing with them and exposing and bunishing them, indeed it would seem is if humanity were doomed.”