The Grey River Argus SATURADY, NOVEMBER l3, 1948. THE JAPANESE WAR LORDS

Grey River Argus, 13 November 1948, Page 4

The Grey River Argus SATURADY, NOVEMBER l3, 1948. THE JAPANESE WAR LORDS

BY Western conventions, the Japanese soldiery during' the war acted criminally when they so acted as to cause the death of prisoners, starved and tortured them, and behaved in the spirit of Asiatic cruelty. Insofar as leaders encouraged gross inhumanity, they had a greater responsibility than the actual perpetrators of such things. 31 any would therefore endorse the sentences, including the several capital ones, which the International Military Tribunal of eleven nations yesterday passed at Tokio upon the twenty-five Japanese leaders who have undergone one of the longest trials on record, and have all been, convicted on at least some of the counts. If, moreover, the doom of death or of imprisonment for life to which an earlier Western Tribunal subjected a selection of the leaders of the Germans, is a proper precedent, there doubtless is a precedent for the Tokio judgments. .It had, however, been proclaimed at the German trials that the Allied Powers, in setting up an indicement were in effect enacting a new international convention, and the charges and verdicts alike at Tokio must be also regarded in the light that the nations sitting in judgment, through their representatives, wc(e deliberately setting up a precedent. History therefore has yet to reveal in the ultimate result whether the peoples of the Orient will take anything like the same stand as that taken on this occasion. A reason for this conjecture is the fact that the findings at Tokio have not been unanimous, the most significant dissentient having been precisely an Asiatic Judge, who was for acquittal of all of the Japanese on all of the counts. His standpoint has been presumably akin to the Prussian tradition. under which nothing is wrong if it be calculated to afford the State advantage in cither a military, diplomatic or political way. ' The other dissentient Judges were apparently so in far less important degree. On the contrary, the Australian who presided over the Tribunal, Mr Justice Webb, was so throughgoing that he would have liked to have the Emperor along with the others in the dock. Australians may have particular reason to remember Japanese atrocities, but Mr Justice Webb is a notably strict jurist, and his finding would commend itself to the vast majority of his countrymen, to mention no others.

When it comes to the charges of conspirary to wage aggressive war, however, there may be room for more than one opinion. For instance, the South African war might look rather a guilty business if judged in connection with the canon that aggressive war is criminal, as well as the planning of such a Avar. Modern war certainly is so total that its planning must be held to be much more questionable than the lesser conflicts of former times, but the moral question is fundamentally the same. It must be on the moral plane that any charge of aggression shall rest. There is little doubt that Japan for at least a decade before the Great War pursued in Asia a deliberate scheme of aggression. The Tribunal finds that her leaders aimed to dominate not only the Avhole of East Asia, but India, South-East iVsia, Australia. New Zealand, the Indian Ocean and no little of the Pacific Ocean. Elad they succeeded, history might have Avritteri them down as the moulders of a ucav order, even if not as they themselves nut it. the builders of the “East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”. The trial and judgment, vindicates principles of humanity, but it also is calculated to serve as a copper Avarning for the posterity of the countries which took up the SAvord and perished by the SAvord. It is conceivable that, Avere the boot on the other foot, there might be a trial on the charge that somebody forged and used the atom bomb. More may be destined to be heard some day on that particular question. Meantime, the arch planners of a ruthless Japanese ascendancy, on top of utter failure in their predatory aspirations, have been made an example for any would-be emulators, in the same way as their Prussian prototypes.