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Show Plan Just and Speedy Trials for Nazi Bigwigs Allied Commission to Handle Cases of High Leaders; Local Officials to Prosecute Minor Offenders. By BAUKIIAGE Veuis Analyst and Commentator. WNU Service, Union Trust Building, Washington, D. C. The legal profession Is about to meet the greatest challenge it has ever faced. The Moscow declaration, published pub-lished November 1, 1943, and signed by President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Min-ister Churchill and Premier Stalin, declares that "those German officers and men and members of the Nazi party" who are responsible for or who have taken a consenting part in "atrocities, evidence of which has been received from authoritative quarters in many countries," will be "tried, judged and punished" according accord-ing to the laws of those countries. This same declaration also declares de-clares in its final paragraph that "major criminals whose offenses have no particular geographical localization" lo-calization" will be tried and dealt with by "joint decision of the Governments Gov-ernments of the Allies." That is where the United States , and the challenge of its legal profession profes-sion comes in. The body which will try these "big shots" is an international military tribunal, to be designated by an official of-ficial title, probably by the time these lines are printed, and it is before be-fore this court that a member of the Supreme court of the United States, Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson, Jack-son, chosen as American chief of counsel, will appear as prosecutor. He will act jointly, it is presumed, with the counsels of the United Kingdom King-dom and the Union of Soviet Socialist Social-ist Republics. Legal Body Without Precedent Never in history has such a legal body been convened. Never has such a task as the one it has before it been of such potential significance to the social and political well-being of the peoples of the earth never, at least, since the day of a certain Roman Ro-man procurator of Judea in Palestine. Pales-tine. Pontius Pilate was unable to face his responsibility, and finding "that he could prevail nothing, but rather that a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands. . . ." The United States does not intend to wash its hands of the responsibility responsibil-ity before it. There seems to be a welter of confusion con-fusion as to just what the function of this "military tribunal" is; as to just what, if any, policy has been established by the "Office of the Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality," which is the title on the letterhead before me. The permanent address of this office is, at this writing, a little uncertain, but it can be reached care of the Pentagon Penta-gon in Washington. Soon it will establish es-tablish foreign headquarters. Despite the confusion, this institution institu-tion has a definite policy and I shall Interpret it informally hereunder: (1) We shall avoid "the law's delay" de-lay" which so annoyed Hamlet. My reason for this assumption is the fact that Justice Jackson did not retire from the Supreme court. The fall term of the court begins in October. Already he has made one trip to Europe for the purpose of rounding up key witnesses and documents doc-uments and is now beginning final preparation for the prosecution. His staff has been assembled for several weeks and he has coordinated the other government agencies interested interest-ed in war crimes (war department, navy department, Office of Strategic Strate-gic Services, and others). Authority for this action is vested in Executive Execu-tive Order 9547 of May 2, 1945, which named Justice Jackson as American Amer-ican prosecutor. Jackson himself said when he was appointed: "There will be no delay on the part of the United States, and we think undue delay is itself a failure." fail-ure." (2) There is no confusion as to United States policy with respect to the type of offender to be tried. Many individual cases have already been prepared, though not yet announced. As I mentioned earlier, what the United States is concerned with is the big shots, that is Jackson's job to try the men whose offenses are broader than those committed in and against members of any single community. To put it broadly, those charged with crimes against humanity human-ity as a whole. l ' ? . I 'I -l ! i : t; ft. . - :?.ivxt -m This rules out the persons brought back to the scene of their crimes, the trials of spies and saboteurs which are coming up daily, offenses against American nationals or against Germans, or individual acts of persecution against Jews or others. oth-ers. In other words, Jackson is after big game and he will not be content to fiddle with minor offenses even if committed by major criminals. His job will be to nail those leaders who are responsible for engineering the whole general criminality of the Nazi-Fascist program. The smaller fry will be taken care of by other legal authorities at the scene of the individual crimes or elsewhere. Jackson Versed As Prosecutor Justice Jackson's reputation and hisrecord are a pretty good guarantee guaran-tee that he will not be stumped by any hurdles that international lawyers might try to put in his way. But that does not mean he will "railroad" the accused. He will not let the trials sink below a dignified dig-nified judicial level. They must be, he says, "trials in fact, not merely trials in name, to ratify a predetermined predeter-mined result." On the other hand, he does not believe that "every step must be taken in accordance with technical common law rules of proof." His record shows that he is a "direct actionist" he can be expected to pull no punches. I said this was the greatest challenge chal-lenge the legal profession had ever faced. I said that because upon the manner in which these trials are conducted will depend just how clearly Naziism will be revealed to the people of the world in its true light. These criminals must convict themselves and their philosophies out of their own mouths. They must not be allowed to stand before the world with their testimony and that of their accusers as a background, as martyrs to what Jackson himself calls "farcical judicial trials" which rationalize previously settled opinions. opin-ions. This would destroy the confidence con-fidence of the people in the whole case for democracy, he believes. Nor must the case against them be presented pre-sented in such a manner as might give even the skeptical a false suggestion sug-gestion that the enemies of democracy democ-racy have a vestige of right on their side. The small but efficient staff which Justice Jackson has selected is worth looking over. There is Maj. Gen. William Donovan, Dono-van, colorful World War I hero and successful lawyer, now head of the OSS; Sydney Alderman, a distinguished distin-guished trial lawyer and general solicitor so-licitor of the Southern Railway; Francis Shea, assistant attorney general and well versed in complicated compli-cated litigations; Naval Lts. James Donovan and Gordon Dean. Donovan Dono-van is general counsel of the OSS. Dean, a former assistant attorney general under Jackson when he was head of the department of justice, is a brilliant and successful lawyer who is being transferred from active duty by the navy for the job. There are no hand-washing Pontius Pon-tius Pilates among them. The rise in income payments to individuals in the United States from an annual figure of $66,168,000,000 in the prewar year of 1938 to a record high total of $156,794,000,000 in 1944 was extended during the first quarter quar-ter of 1945, according to the Alexander Alex-ander Hamilton Institute. Income payments during the first three months amounted to $39,825,000,000 this year as against $37,726,000,000 last year, an increase of 5.6 per cent. Income from every source showed expansion. Salaries and wagej rose from $27,357,000,000 to $28,628,000,000, an increase of 4.6 per cent, while dividends and interest rose from $2,454,000,000 to $2,770,000,000, an increase in-crease of 12.9 per cent. Although spending by consumers was at a record high rate during the first quarter, it is evident from preliminary information that consumers' con-sumers' income exceeded spending by an amount sufficient not only to meet taxes but to add to consumers' wartime savings, thus increasing the threat of inflation when peace returns. |