 |
shining example. Innocent I
(401-417) wrote in his letter of 13 December 414 to the bishops of
Macedonia: |
“‘It often happens
that, if whole peoples or great masses have sinned, much goes unpunished, as it
is impossible to haul so great a number before a court of justice. In such
cases, past sins will be left to the judgment of God, but prepare most
meticulously for any future
recurrences.’”
|
| Pribilla then continues: |
| |
“Our age ought to ponder
the wisdom of that counsel.” |
| Your Honors, we, too, live in, and have passed through, times of
“confusion and turbulence” which are unrivalled in the history
of the world. The problems of criminal law confronting the judges of that time
cannot have been more difficult for the human mind to solve in the 5th century
than they are now. But we have chosen a different course, attempting to find
the guilty men by means of these trials. It is not my business to criticize
that decision of your government, influenced as it was mainly by political
considerations. You will have noticed that my personal attitude to such an
undertaking is one of extreme scepticism. As far as I am concerned, I have been
convinced by Innocent I, and this personal conviction can only be strengthened
by passages like the following taken from the book by Sumner Welles on the
postwar period in America after the First World War, and which had been quoted
above. |
| |
“Senate committees were
indulging in long-drawn-out sessions to prove that the country had been plunged
into the First World War solely because of the Machiavellian machinations of
the arms manufacturers and of the international
bankers.” |
There is, after all, nothing new under the sun. And the philosophical
maxim, “history repeats itself,” is, I am almost inclined to say,
unfortunately, true.
And so is the human tendency to seek scapegoats
for all disasters of complicated origins: and thus legends are born such as the
prosecution legend of the “Unholy Trinity.” which has brought these
men into the dock. When Hitler suffered reverses the cry went up, “the
Jews are to blame” The place of the Jews as scapegoat has now been taken
by the “bloated capitalists,” which is the term of abuse now publicly
bestowed upon the industrialist. Every age has its own scapegoats. Such human
weakness becomes dangerous only when it affects the search for truth — and
thus the practical administration of justice, and historical research. That is
the reason why those wise people, the ancient Greeks, depicted Dike, the
Goddess of Justice, with a bandage round her eyes, to protect her against the
pernicious influence of contemporary prejudice. |
951 |
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