The Daily News. THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 1920. BOCHE JUSTICE (?)

Taranaki Daily News, 11 March 1920, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 1920. BOCHE JUSTICE (?)

The result of the German Commission's inquiry into the case of Captain Pryatt is exactly what might have been expected. It justifies the death sentence, though it regrets the unnecessarily speedy execution. The Commission exercised some fertility of resource in branding Captain Fryatt as a "frane-tireur." An explanation of this term is necessary to show why the Commission adopted this accusation. During the FrancoGerman war (1870-71) numbers of French peasants took up arms and formed irregular corps, called francs-tireurs (literally, freeshooters), whom the Germans refused to recognise as part of the regular French force, and when members of this organisation were captured they were at once shot. By malevolently designating Captain Fryatt as a franc-tireur, the Germans deliberately placed him in the category of those to be at once shot, so that the pretence of regret at'' unnecessarily speedy execution" is at once disposed of, and the charge of murder against the executioners becomes selfevident. It will be remembered that, in February, 1915, the Germans notified their campaign of sinking enemy merchant ships without warning. Towards the end of the following month, Captain Fryatt, master of the Great Eastern Railway Company's crossChannel steamer Brussels, was signalled to stop by the U33. Instead of obeying the order, he turned his ship at full speed, ramming and sinking the submarine. Late in June his vessel was captured, and he was taken by the Huns to Zeebrugge, and later tried at Brussels, condemned to death, and executed on July 27, with the consent of the German Emperor and the high military authorities. Had the Brussels been an armed vessel resisting capture, the crew would have been treated as prisoners of war, but because it was unharmed, and the captain did his best to save both his ship and those on board, he was deliberately murdered, o» the ground that

he had no status as a unit of any recognised enemy force. In the face of the Commission's report it is futile to expect that other war crimes investigated by a German tribunal will result in the punishment of those responsible. By the lerman naval code Captain Fryatt's action was permissible, and, as the Handelsblad, a Dutch newspaper of high standing, pointed out, "according to the most pitiless rules of war this deed is unjustifiable. Every merchant ship has a right to defend itself against, enemy ships. That is an old right never modified by any international agreement." The commission' 3 report affords ample proof that the Boche can find or invent plausible grounds for not convicting war criminals. Just as the Prussians refused to recognise the francs-tireurs as part of the regular French forces, so will the Germans of to-day still be a law unto themselves. This attitude is practically an assertion that Germany can do no wrong, so that the long list of diabolical acts, including the horrors at the "Wittenberg oamp, which the commission asserts are absolutely without foundation., will go unpunished unless the Allies take drastic action to bring the criminals to justice. It would seem that those who have been summoned to notify their addresses, owing to their names being on the extradition list, may regard the' notification with complacency. If the cruel and deliberate murder of Captain Pryatt is condoned by the German tribunal, it is evident that Boche justice is the logical outcome of allowing criminals to go through the farce of trying their associates. If the Allies tolerate this it will be a further outrage on humanity.