The Riom Trials
The tragi-comic drama of the " war-guilt " trials staged at Riom is dragging its weary course along, but is by no means going according to plan. The Germans had urged the Vichy Government thus to wash its dirty linen in public because they intended a public demonstration, instituted by Frenchmen, to establish the guilt of France in challenging war with Germany. In effect, they wished to prove that it is not impossible to indict a whole nation, and meant the trial to show conclusively that the chosen rulers of France were guilty of starting the war. They did not realise that they were providing a platform for M. Daladier and the other defendants to state their own case and the case against Germany, though the censorship may prevent their answers from reaching the German and French public. Even the President of the Court and the Public Prosecutor are not adequately playing the German game, for their questions have been framed lather to show that the ex-rulers of France made insufficient preparations for war than that no preparations should have been made. M. Daladier found himself accused, not so much of preparing war, but of inadequate production for war—of not making enough tanks, enough aircraft, enough modern artillery. Many of his replies showed that the regime which accused him must itself share the blame for earlier omissions, and that in the actual conduct of the war it was not the administration but the military leaders who failed, through bad distribution of the forces and the dispersion of the armoured units. The course the trial is taking is causing intense annoyance to the Germans. Dr. Schmitt, Press chief of the German Foreign Office, has stated that if it is not desired to expose " the kernel of the problem—why France decided on war," the trial should not have been held at all. So Vichy, through remembering for once that it is French, is failing to please its German masters.
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