A New N.A.T.O. Agreement
The general smoothness of the working of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation arrangements. is demonstrated not so much by the device of appointing Admiral Carney Commander-in- Chief in Southern Europe (the vexed question of the Mediter- ranean command still being left open) as by the agreement signed on Tuesday by the twelve member-States regulating the legal position of troops stationed, under General Eisenhower's strategic dispositions, in another country than their own. That such disposition may be necessary-is clear, and equally clear are the complications that might arise from them. A soldier is per- fectly capable of committing civil offences, and he is not normally immune from the process of the civil law of his own country when he does that. The new agreement provides, very rightly but very necessarily, that he shall be equally subject to the civil law,of the Atlantic Treaty country where he may be stationed- " the receiving country " as it is to be technically called. Offences there must needs be. and both criminal and civil proceedings may be necessitated in different cases. That is provided for, and so are difficulties that may arise regarding housing, the employment of local labour, taxation (national and local) and similar questions. Mr. Morrison was well justified in expressing satis- faction that the whole business had been settled so expeditiously and so harmoniously.
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