Enter the Lawyers

The War Crimes Commission (full title: United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes) in session in London last week was far enough along with its work to know that even the detection and punishment of "war criminals" will be no simple matter. For ordinary citizens, who think that they know a Nazi criminal when they see one, some astonishing questions were posed: >Exactly who is a war criminal?

>Who will try whom?*

>What about prize criminals who are claimed by more than one nation?

>What about Nazis like Heinrich Himmler, who may never have shot or beaten a Jew to death, personally?

>How can the U.S. and Britain punish any war criminals for crimes committed on foreign soil?

Such legalistics may have made plain Britons and Americans slightly ill. But these and other hairlines will grow & grow before the first Nazi come to trial.

For Death? For Torture? Herbert Claiborne Pell, U.S. delegate on the Commission, says frankly that he is in favor of being tough. Gallup polices in Britain recently voted: 40% to shoot Axis big shots outright; 18% for trial; 15% for torture; 11% for imprisonment or exile; the rest for miscellaneous solutions, including one Briton in a hundred who would just let them go.

*The Moscow Declaration said that known criminals in foreign countries will be returned to the scenes of their crimes, tried there. But not all are in this category.

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