Indefinite Durance
The Prime Minister's statement on the repatriation of German prisoners rests on legality, rather than equity, and indeed on the stretching of legality to something very near dishonesty. It is true that under the Geneva Convention we are entitled to hold prisoners of war tin a treaty of peace is signed, but no one ever contemplated, when that convention was drafted, that more than two years after the end of a war the treaty .of peace would not even be in sight. Mr. Attlee's claim that the retention of these prisoners, as one of the only ways in which Germany can make reparation for the damage she has caused, is not inequitable will not stand examina- tion. Even assuming that it is equitable to impose this form of reparation unilaterally, in the absence of any treaty provision regard- ing it, it is obviously inequitable to the point of inhumanity to hold in this country month after month and year after year particular individuals whom the accident of capture befell. Why should they bear vicariously for the German nation the whole burden of this form of reparation ? If reparation through forced labour can be legitimately insisted on—and there is something to be said for the contention that it can—then at least let the Germans now here go home and others be brought over to take their place. But forced labour of any kind is repugnant to British ideas. The right course is to let Germans, here or in Germany, work in Britain, like other foreigners, as volunteers at proper rates of pay.
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