FOREIGN NEWS

WAR CRIMES The Fallen Eagles

Civilization wore a cutaway and grey striped trousers for the great occasion.

To prosaic observers, the figure thus impeccably attired was not really Civilization, but just a powerfully angry American, name of Robert Jackson of Jamestown, N.Y. But to the more imaginative (including Jackson) it was Civilization itself which stood at the prosecutor's rostrum, resonantly accusing the 20 Germans in the dock of vile assault & battery on all mankind.

"We are gathered," said the presiding judge, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, "to try crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity." With this mildly prejudicial statement, the Nuernberg trial opened. The four judges and their four alternates on the bench of the international tribunal sat reassuringly close to their respective national flags.

On the other side of the floodlit, simply furnished courtroom sat Germany's fallen leaders. They had fallen far and hard. Only a short time ago, their words and deeds had brought fear to people from Murmansk to Lands End to Jamestown, N.Y. Now they were just an odd and seedy assortment of soldiers, rowdies, bureaucrats and bourgeois, who hardly looked important enough to have provoked the heavy wave of hatred, disgust and indignation which had swept them to the prisoners' box.

Hermann Goring, whom most of them tacitly accepted as their "Fuehrer," managed to salvage his vastly deceptive joviality (he graciously gave his autograph to a U.S. Navy technician) and one of his fancy uniforms, a fawn-colored, brass-buttoned affair, stripped of medals and cut down to fit his slenderized body.

The moods of his fellow defendants were varied. Most were nervous, winced even at the mention of their names. Ex-Foreign Minister Ribbentrop looked broken and old, with a hurt, petulant look on his frozen face. Best show of austere indifference was given by former Chief of the Supreme High Command Wilhelm Keitel. Rudolf Hess, now officially pronounced an amnesia victim, was the most morose-looking of all, his green-tinged skin drawn tightly about his cadaverous skull. He tried to pass the time by reading Bavarian folk tales, but was much disturbed by stomach cramps, which made him rock back & forth on his bench.

Their first day as defendants had tired them. By 7 the cell block was quiet. All were asleep. Mused a reporter: "I'd give anything for a look at their dreams."

Next day the accused passed before the judges, entering their fervent pleas of "not guilty." It was clear that the men whose brass-knuckle philosophy had brushed aside not only legalisms but law itself would seek refuge in legalistic arguments.

In his four-hour opening oration, Jackson expounded his theory that international law, like domestic common law, must grow from unprecedented, bold judicial actions. Said he: "[The defendants] are living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power. . . . Must such wrongs either be ignored or redressed in hot blood?"

GREAT BRITAIN A Modest Proposal

In the world's largest city last week, toward the middle of the 20th Century after Christ, five years after the Great Blitz, an eight-year-old boy was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. Said London's child: "Alive."

Back to Sanity

Britons knew last week that war's psychoses were receding fast: from Scotland came reports that the Loch Ness monster has been seen again. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.