The Nuremberg Acquittals
The acquittal of Von Papen, Schacht and Fritzsche by a court which heard lengthy evidence and weighed every word of it care- fully has been ill received by many people in many countries who have not had the opportunity of studying in 4,..ty detail the speeches for the prosecution and the defence, and would be hard put to it to summarise the terms of the charter on which the court had to act. They may be right, but the idea of these men, who have been in prison for a year or more, and seen their lives at stake for almost as long, being rearrested by German authorities and tried on not very different charges by German courts is repugnant to the average Englishman's sense of justice. It is hard, moreover, to avoid the conclusion that many of the Germans—not, admittedly, all of them— who are now so clamorous for penalties on the acquitted three are seizing the opportunity to acquire merit for themselves by the studied display of anti-Nazi zeal. There is nothing in any of the three to inspire admiration or even sympathy. They must be counted fortunate to have escaped conviction on something not much better than the benefit of a doubt. But they have stood their trial and got off. The Allied authorities would do well to allow them now to disappear into some obscurity from which they will be little tempted to emerge. The doctrine autrefois acquit, well estab- lished in British law, does not apply precisely here. It should be allowed to prevail none the less.
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