The Waikato Times. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1944 PUNISHMENT OF WAR CRIMINALS

Waikato Times, Volume 195, Issue 22460, 22 September 1944, Page 2

The Waikato Times. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1944 PUNISHMENT OF WAR CRIMINALS

Discussing the punishment of war criminals, the New Zealand Parliament found itself face to face with the long-foreseen difficulty that there is no international authority with the necessary jurisdiction to bring such criminals to trial and justice. Are the instigators of the war and of countless atrocities then to go unpunished? Are the murderers of millions of Jews and of Europeans of many races to be allowed to go free after the war and carry into the peace the inference that such criminals can again indulge in a bloodbath without fear of the consequences if they escape death in battle? Is it in fact a crime against any established code excepting that of Christianity or of ihdividual morality to murder and plunder under the banner of war? Obviously if order is to be preserved in the world there must be established at the earliest possible moment an international court competent to try and to ppnish offenders against an international code of law’.

But will such a court be competent to deal with criminals of the present war? Can anyone be punished for performing an act against which there is no law at the time of commission? People all over the world are concerned not so much w'ith what might happen in any future war as with the dispensation of justice in the present case. Most people express the hope that the criminals will fall victims to the war which they helped to create. But that is a vain hope. The arch criminals will see that they remain out of the danger zone, believing that no tribunal will have jurisdiction over them when their career of violence is ended and peace is reached at a cost of many millions of lives. The Kaiser Wilhelm, but a pale vision of the Hitler to come, succeeded after the last war, and all his lieutenants who escaped the battle lived to prepare for another holocaust. Human nature revolts against a repetition of the events of 1918. There are two methods by which justice may be done, apart from the chance that all the criminals may be destroyed in the process of war. An international tribunal may be appointed immediately, backed by the consent of hundreds of millions of people to act, possibly not legally in the ordinary sense, but by common concurrence. Alternatively, the appropriate punishment of all w T ar criminals may be made one of the terms of the armistice or the peace treaty. Germany, for instance, could be compelled adequately to punish the listed criminals before she is granted an armistice or any surcease from the armed onslaught. Certainly the people who have suffered the ravages of the war will not be content to allow peace to come and all opportunities to be lost in circumstances such as those which faced the New Zealand Parliament.