NOT JUSTIFIED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26043, 5 January 1946, Page 5

NOT JUSTIFIED

SINGAPORE ESCAPE AUSTRALIAN GENERAL COMMISSION'S FINDNIG (Rec. 1 a.m.) SYDNEY, Jan. 4. The finding that, having regard to the terms of capitulation, Major-general Gordon Bennett was not justified in relinquishing his command and leaving Singapore was made by Mr Justice Ligertwood in his report to the Commonwealth Government. He said he thought Bennett’s duty was to have remained in command of the A.I.F. until the surrender was complete. Other findings were that at the time Bennett left Singapore he was not a prisoner of war in the sense of being a soldier who was under a duty to escape. He was in the position of a soldier whose commanding officer had agreed to surrender and to submit him to directions which would have made him a prisoner of war. Mr Justice Ligertwood said that in relinquishing his command and leaving Singapore, Bennett did not have the permission of any competent authority who could give him such

permission. General Percival could not do SO' because he signed the capitulation, under which he agreed that Bennett, as one of the troops under has command, would have surrendered. Even the Australian Government could not have given him such permission because it was within the competence of General Percival to agree that Bennett, as one of such troops, would have surrendered and the capitulation bound the Australian Government as much as it did General Percival. Discussing Bennett’s reasons and motives for leaving Singapore some of the judge’s findings were—first, ‘‘he genuinely believed Australia was in peril and that it was of vital importance for the safety of the country that he should return to take a leading part in its defence; secondly, he genuinely, but in my opinion mistakenly, believed that immediately upon the cessation of hostilities the whole of the British forces in Singapore Island had been surrendered to the Japanese and that he was a prisoner of war under a duty to escape if he could. The escape was a hazardous enterprise and involved no reflection on Bennett’s personal courage.”