WAR CRIMES AND PUNISHMENT SIR,—In your issue of March 5th,
Professor P. H. Winfield, in his review of Georg Schwarzenberger's International Law and Totalitarian Lawless- ness suggests that Hitler should be sent to St. Helena. Almost daily timorous or tender-hearted souls in this country are expressing the same opinion in the Press and elsewhere. I think they should be reminded of the historical fact that had Napoleon been sent to the gallows instead of to Elba there would have been no "Hundred Days" and no Waterloo, with tens of thousands of men cut off in the flower of their manhood. It was a victory won by a very narrow margin and had the outcome been otherwise than it was the whole course of history would have been altered.
There seems to be a curious fear in this country that we may make martyrs of criminal leaders like Hitler and Mussolini. Professor Winfield seems to be obsessed by this fear, but would they cease to be martyrs if they were to die on St. Helena? The French seem to disprove this in their attitude to Napoleon. At any rate, better a martyr (if s the Germans should feel that way about it, which for various reasons may be doubted) than a live leader who by some twist of fate or move of events might be able to stage a come-back, as did Napoleon. But what revolts many people in the attitude of those who do not wish to see the extreme penalty applied to Hitler is that they do not seem to be so queasy as to what may happen to his henchmen, yet if ever there has been a man who by inspiration, by example and command, has been the head and front of crime that staggers the imagination, that man is Hitler. Fortunately, the common man in this country and in all the tortured lands under the Nazi heel is in no doubt as to the issue and the only permissible ending to it.—Yours faithfully, H. G. LYALL. The Hazels, Bricker Wood, via Watford, Herts,
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