Evening Post. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1933. JUSTICE FRENCH AND GERMAN

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 102, 27 October 1933, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1933. JUSTICE FRENCH AND GERMAN

The irreconcilable differences that continue to divide France and Germany on almost everything else have not prevented them from joining during the last few days in presenting 'a striking object-lesson to the world. Each of them has been showing in its own way how a criminal trial should not be conducted, and, though the methods and the circumstances of the two cases differ so widely that exact comparison is not easy, the honours seem to, be about even. At Aix en Provence the "scenes of wild disorder" which are distinguishing the.trial of Sarret and his accomplices are strictly in keeping with die hysterical traditions of the French Courts where capital charges or crimes of passion are concerned. One of the accused women was reported on Wednesday to be "crying continuously"—an argument to which a French jury is peculiarly susceptible—but to have apparently met Sarret on equal terms when they "accused each other of lying, shaking tKeir fists at one another." Such a trifle as this was obviously beneath the notice of the Judge, and when the angry passions spread to the Bar the remedy that he applied was not of a heroic character. "Eventually a violent duel between counsel caused an uproar and a suspension of the proceedings." On the following day some fierce recriminations between the prosecutor and one of the lawyers for the defence "unloosed a pandemonium, and the Judge adjourned the case for an hour, after which the prosecutor and the lawyer shook hands and the trial proceeded." In Germany justice is being travestied in a very different way and under far more interesting conditions. On February 27 the Reichstag was burnt in circumstances so opportune for the Nazi Government that Herr Hitler himself described it at the time as "providential." The General Election was fixed for March 5, and the result was far from certain. But this admirably timed fire removed every vestige of a doubt. "The Reichstag fire," said the "Manchester Guardian," "was the foundation-stone of the Hitlerite triumph." , The foundation-stone was well and truly laid by the man who lit the fire, and by means of a propaganda, which both in its rapidity and in its far-reaching and perhaps permanent effects must be ->without a parallel in the history of agitation, the Nazis had virtually completed the structure within a week. They seized 'the occasion, said th© "Manchester Guardian" of September 15, whoever provided it, to declare the discoyery of, a Communist plot for "bloody insurrection and civil war"; to suppress their political opponents; to extinguish the Press; above all, to institute the Terror, by th© fear of which they, established, as they still maintain,"the dictatorship. Such was the prize, and so "providential" was the opportunity which put it into the hands of the Nazis that the 1500 warrants which were executed on the following day had all been completed and signed, each with a photograph attached but without a date stamp, on the morning of the fire! But the documentary evidence of the Communist plot for "bloody insurrection and civil war" with which Captain Goering proposed to startle die country has not been produced to this day, partly because with the help of his friend, Captain Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda and Enlightenment,l he was able to scare the country to pieces without producing the evidence, and partly, as the sceptics say with a plausibility which grows stronger every day, he has no evidence to produce. And today, exactly eight months after the fire, the trial in which the Nazi Ministers are virtually the accused, and which men who were eager to have the whole story told and not to cover up their tracks would surely have made every possible effort to expedite, is still dragging its slow length along. The trial had begun at Leipzig on September 21 in a manner which did nothing to diminish the fears and suspicions arising from the long delay. When the Judges entered everybody rose and gave the Fascist salute—everybody except the unfortunate Van der Lubbe, whose hands were still heavily manacled behind his back. In passing it may be noted that what might be called the vindictive character of Nazi Jus- j

tice is illustrated by the treatment of prisoners awaiting trial. One of the requests made by the International Legal Commission which has been interesting itself in the defence was for "more humane treatment of accused—e.g. Torgler to be released from chains." But this request, along with all the others, was refused. The removal of Van der Lubbe's handcuffs when he rose to hear the charge represented at any rate some improvement on this medieval brutality. In his opening address the President of the Court referred to another question which had been raised by M. Romain Rolland's Commission. Its first two points were "free choice of defending counsel by the accused" and "permission for foreign counsel to be selected if desired." Foreign counsel were not admitted, said the President, because they considered that their motives would be less to guard tho interests of the accused than to awake distrust of-German justice. . Could any foreign counsel have aroused so profound a distrust of German justice as the ruling itself was bound to produce? Imagine a British Judge inquiring into the motives of the counsel whom a man on trial for his life desired to retain! But this German Judge does not even inquire; he excludes every member of the English or French Bar on the suspicion that he would be so blind to his duty as to sacrifice the life of his client to the interests of a silly and futile vendetta against the Courts and the Government of Germany. But what dangerous people these foreign lawyers are, and how queer are the methods of German justice, has been further illustrated by a more recent phase of the same question. A fortnight ago four American, Bulgarian, and French lawyers were reported to have protested against the exclusion of the accused Dimirroff from the court on account of his violent behaviour. The result of a protest, which was certainly rhetorically and tactlessly candid, was that these four lawyers were themselves expelled from the court,' and after a police examination were to be expelled from Germany. Such are the methods of German justice!