Evening star., 1945-08-12

! war OF aggression constituted an In
ternational crime" He cited a reso-
luton of the eighth assembly of the
League of Nations in 1927 to the same
effect.
Despite these legal bases, however,
Justice jackson implied in his letter
that the United States, Great Britain,
Russia and France, by actually trying
war leaders as criminals, were crossing
new legal frontiers. In justification OF
this journey, he wrote:
/ Doubtless what appeals to men Of
| good will and common sense as the
crime which comprehends all lesser
crimes, is the crime of making unjusti-
fable war. War necessarily is calcu-
lated series of killings, of destruction Of
| property, of expressions = But inter-
national law as generally taught in the
| 18th century and the early part of the
goth century generally declared that
war-making was not illegal and Is no
crime at law -
Sees Modern Distinction.
This, however, is a departure from
the doctrine taught by Grotius, the
father of international law, that there
is distinction between the just and
the unjust war-the war of defense and
the war of aggression. "*"
| Unless we are prepared to abandon
! every principle of growth for interna-
| tional law, we cannot deny that our
own day has its right to institute GUS
| toms and to conclude agreements that
! will ~,
newer sand strengthened international
law
| Students of international law pointed
out another interesting implication of
the four-poWer commissions decision
that aggressive war is crime 1t dras-
tically narrows, they said, the field of
neutrality and places all countries under
a strong moral, and perhaps legal, re-
sponsibility to bring the aggressor to
book.
| These observers drew a parallel be-
tween this and the obligation of the in
| dlvldual under English common law
| which holds that any citizen who, given
! the opportunity, fails to act to appre-
| hend criminal is subject to prosecu-
ton To lesser extent the same prin-
ciple, authorities said is recognized in
/ American law. In most States a police
officer may call upon a citizen to aid
him in the arrest of criminal
Crimes Against Humanity.
! Another provision n the charter
drafted by the four-power commission
which aroused interest here was section
! of article 6 which defines crimes
against humanity" These are described
! as inhuman acts against civilian popu.
lations either before or during a war"
and prosecutions on political racial or
religious grounds in execution or in
connection with any crimes within the
| jurisdiction of the tribunal, whether or
| not they were in violation of the domes-
| tic law of the country where perpe-
| trated ="
/ Ihls section, apparently, will give the
/ Allied military tribunal to be set up in
Berlin full power to punish Hitler's SIS
troops and the Gestapo for atrocities
/ committed against the citizens of Aus
tria and Czechoslovakia, which were oc-
| cupied by Germany before the outbreak
! OF war on September l. 1899.
| Moreover, the second part of the def
| milton seems to establish the power Of
the tribunal to punish Hitler's hire
lings for their crimes against minority
groups in Germany itself-the Jews and
Communists, for example.
The right of an international court
to punish the Nazis for crimes against
their own minorities was vigorously up-
| held last winter by Herbert c. Pell,
American member of the United Ma
t1ons War Crimes Commission, who re-
signed, repeatedly after a disagreement
with the State Department on policy,
1t appears now that his thesis has been
accepted
Connects Two Crimes.
| In public statement made imme-
diately after his resignation, Mr. Pell
explained why he felt that it was justi-
| fable for an international tribunal to
punish the Nazis for their domestic
| crimes
THE persecution of minorities." he
wrote, lis an easy and from ancient
times, regularly used means of estab-
hshlng tyrannical governments which
inevitably become belligerent sooner or
later. Every such government. must
canailze discontent and transmute the
hostility provoked by it's own methods
at home into hatred of foreign coun-
tries. The persecution of a minority
WILL tend at first to consolidate the
gang and will COW the opposition or all
citizens, even those not belonging to the
prosecuted minority 49,
In other words, Mr. Pell linked the
domestic crimes of the Nazis to their
international crimes by holding that
the former were a necessary stem in
making the latter possible.
observers here consider it highly sig.
nlncant that such hard and fast def
nltions OF international crimes as those
contained in the charter of the military
tribunal set up in the four power agree
ment should become a part of accented
international law just as the United
Nations security organization and the
new World Court are being established.
One obstacle which kept the old
League OF Nations and World Court
from being effective barriers to aggres-
siVe war was the hazy state of interna.
tional law as related to this subject.
Under the conceptions of international
law generally accepted at the time these
two bodies were set up, nations making
war Kept within legal bounds so long
as they abided by the rules laid down
IN the 1907 Hague convention-a sort