Asylum for War Criminals ?
Certain persons who have conspicuously disappeared from the public view—Mussolini, Farinacci, Ciano, and a number of other prominent Fascists—will soon be officially " wanted " by the United Nations' police. Where are they now? To what country are they looking for asylum when the Allies sweep victoriously over Europe? And there are Germans as well as Italians—the Nazi leaders, in- cluding Hitler himself—who are doubtless considering their future means of escape. There will not be a large number of neutral countries accessible, and probably still fewer which will be willing to become accomplices in crime by harbouring these fugitives from justice. President Roosevelt has said he would find it difficult to believe that any neutral country would extend asylum to them, and that to do so would be inconsistent with the principles for which the United Nations are fighting. After consultation with the United States and Russia, the British Government have issued warnings through their representatives in neutral States calling upon them to refuse asylum to persons guilty of war crimes. It is for them to decide—and for the United Nations to decide, if the necessity should ever arise, how far and by what means their demand is to be pressed. During the war the Nazis have secured more than their due from neutral States either through the sympathy of their rulers or through fear. Undoubtedly fear played some part in the decision of the Swedish Government to allow passage across its territory to German troops between Norway and Germany, and since it has now far less to fear it is about to reverse that decision. When the war has been won there will be few, if any, neutral countries which will feel it consistent with honour and dignity to admit men, accused of crime, attempting to flee from the justice of the United Nations. The alternative to acknowledging the law of the United Nations, in The case of a neutral, might be to put itself outside the pale of that law.
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