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Volume VI · Page 1089
| the fact that war had not been declared, with the demand, "let us not
split hairs." And Marshal Stalin recommended to his Allies to carry out
continuous air attacks on German cities, and they acted in conformance with his
words. While major powers in a battle of giants fight for victory or destruction with the most modern means for the conduct of war, while rockets are racing through the ether, and while the valuable secret of mass annihilation through atomic energy is slowly ripening towards perfection, are these six businessmen supposed to live their own war in accordance with the Hague Rules of Land Warfare of 1907? While one German city, and one German factory after another were destroyed to rubble and ashes, should they have considered it as forbidden to utilize the enemy's factories? Should they have considered it a crime to force foreign workers to work while the enemy considered it his right to kill German workers with their wives and children by air attacks? If that really was to be expected of them, then one cannot be surprised at the resigned statement of one of the best known German experts on international law-"from now on there are two kinds of international law, one for German nationals and one for the rest of the world."* * Prof. Dr. Rudolf von Laun, Die Hanger Landkriegsordnung, Wolfenbuettel, 1946, page 64. I, however, cannot agree with that statement. There are not two kinds of law. Rather there are two sets of standards. There can be only one kind of international law which applies to everyone, or none at all. That is the decision to be made and the responsibility which rests on you as the judges. This word "judge" represents a high duty. The courts of all countries have recognized it as their highest duty to protect the rights of the individual from abuses by the government. Their dignity has always depended on how capable of that very duty they proved themselves to be. When the Prussian Supreme Court had the courage in a legal altercation to decide against the absolute monarch, Frederick the Great, the contemporaries said in admiration, "There still are judges in Berlin." When in 1933 the German Reich Supreme Court in the trial against the Reichstag arsonists acquitted the accused Communist leaders, among them the present Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Dimitrov, despite strongest political pressure, all those who did not want to see justice reduced to becoming the harlot of politics breathed a sigh of relief. The judges of your country, the United States of America, may point to a proud tradition in regard to the protection of the individual against the State. Remember that tradition, and the |
