The World CONDEMNS

Cue (NZERS), Issue 28, 31 July 1945, Page 27

The World CONDEMNS

HERE i-is. no subject on which J- people feel more deeply than that of war criminals. And yet there is no subject about which there is more suspicion that the fine words uttered during the fighting will remain fine words and nothing more. The enter tainment of Goering and other highranking "thugs by Allied officers on their arrest has added to this deep distrust and 'it is nourished by the slow process of , such machinery as exists. -

The people of the world do not want slow pedantic justice. They have already tried and found guilty the leaders pf the Third Reich. Protest Goering how, he may, his guilt Vis known. He is a part and parcel of the ’ whole 'criminal system he helped to create, and his advertised assistance to -friends caught by the. Gestapo is hardly mitigation. There was quite a dumber who did not have the. honour of his .friendship. They died under the rubber truncheon, the rack, and the tommy gun.

* The feeling, of the people is undoubtedly right. Such men,as Goering could be shot after the drum-head court martial, and 1 only the Germans would deny the justice of the sentence. But there are only a few whose guilt is' so crystal-clear, x only a few, comparatively speaking, who are .so wellknown that identification and proof can be altogether dispensed with. At what point are the United Nations to

the line? The men in charge of the prosecutions know that there is no point at which the line can be drawn with any certainty. There -is only one answer, i Everyone must be tried ,in full form, and against. each, however well known, proof must be brought sufficient to' satisfy an impartial judge.

This collection of witnesses is a slow business. The- preparation of the prosecutions so thatno one escapes a merited punishment is also- slow, and those who expected swift retribution to follow victory fret-at the delay. It would probably have been worth while to do as the Russians did at Lublin, and make a start with’ some clear-cut cases, to show that justice could be done and was going to be done'.

There are many difficulties in the way,'/and perhaps the greatest is the difficulty that almost ail these tcriminals can plead military or Apolitical orders from higher tup so that they have committed no offence under German law. And, in fact, there does not exist any law under which they can be punished. .Their . offences are crimes against humanity, but humanity, has never enacted a world-wide criminal code to cover offences against itself, since there never has been nor is there now a universal legislative body. There is no precedent for charging an invading soldier 'under the laws ; of the invaded country for Acts, ; however criminal, , committed in the course of his military employment.

All this may seem legalistic hairsplitting but it is by no means beside the point. . First, the United Nations have to decide .under what law they intend to proceed. If it is under the law of the country where the crimes were committed then, they will have consciously to enunciate a new principle and state categorically that

orders are no excuse for criminal actions, and that the war criminals may, not raise that defence. If they could, all t crimes would eventually, be tiled on the person'of the conveniently deceased Fuehrer himself and guilt would disappear. If proceedings are to be under a new international code, that code will have to be made'retrospective,, a most unusual course, and one which could easily be made to appear a most unjust one in later years by the brood of apologists which the German race is sure to spawn. If the offences are to be treated as committed against the already existing international law then the right of national tribunals to try' those who committed crimes. on their own soil

under their own codes at once becomes highly arguable. < 'i . The* only way, which seems comparatively clear of legal difficulties is the way taken after the last war of asking German national courts to try the offenders. But that is a course which the Germans themselves put out of court. After the last war ' the. allegedly co-operative Weimar . Repub. lie pleaded to be allowed to try its own criminals, and the Allies, anxious not to destroy their own creation, agreed. But the democratic and humane judges of this reborn country were humane only ? to the prisoners* Murderers of small children, U-boat captains^.who had sunk a hospital 'ship with blazing lights and 1 shelled its boats, torturers, of British prisoners of war, were , given derisory gaol , sentences which they never served. . The German people regarded these sadistic, butchers as heroes. There is no doubt that they regard the present thugs and gangsters as fine J representatives of German manhood.' .There is no hope there of light, reason or justice. The , mind, off the German, the product of a century of propaganda, is a twisted and unhealthy thing. We .may not comprehend it, but we know .enough of the way it works not to make that' particular mistake again, nor to believe that anyone is an anti-Nazi who has not proved it in his own person by struggle and suffering over the past years.

It seems then that if, as has been promised, war criminals will be tried where , their crimes were committed, a new procedure must be laid down, defences ' be • limited only to proving mistaken identity and the prosecution be required only to prove that acts now deemed, international crimes were in fact committed by the accused. Punishment must be imposed on a uniform scale, and it must he such as will act as a clear warning to the German and Japanese nations that a new standard

has been set up in international relations, the standard of conformity with ’the natural laws of human decency. It must be so wide in its scope and sb drastic that in future no soldier dare accept an order ' which makes him liable to its retribution*, and it must be both sure and just. Since there are no international police it seems that soldiers must carry out much of the police work that will necessarily be involved before these trials can be completed. . ,

.: It is to be hoped that when the time comes to deal with the war criminals

of Japan the procedure will have been clearly established so* that punishment can follow swiftly upon defeat in the limited number of cases where the ,guilty persons have not already removed the more essential parts of their own insides. <

But no punishment of war criminals will have any effect which is not fol-, lowed by a re-education of the peoples concerned. If this is 1 not done those executed, will merely become the new martyrs and saints of the religion of race that has already brought so much suffering to the world. ..