“WAR GUILT”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 August 1940, Page 6

“WAR GUILT”

PROSECUTION OF FRENCH LEADERS i j POLICY OF THE PETAIN GOVERNMENT. DESIRE TO APPEASE PUBLIC OPINION. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) VICHY, July 31. The Havas New Agency says it is with a desire to appease public opinion which is upset by the terrible consequences of the war which the nation had not wanted, that the Petain Government has created a Supreme Court of Justice, to establish war responsibility, which may lie in the political, diplomatic or military sphere. The constitutional acts of the Petain Government abrogate previous laws which determined the conditions under which the Senate might constitute itself a High Court. The new Supreme Court’s competence is wider than that of the High Court. It can be summoned after a Cabinet decision. The penalties do not differ from those of common law and there will be no death penalty, which cannot be imposed in France for political crimes. There will be no reprieves and no appeals. NAZI COMMENT NEGLECT OF HITLER’S 1 “PEACE OFFERS.” ALLEGED MALTREATMENT OF PRISONERS. (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) BERLIN, July 31. The official “Diplomatische Correspondenz” says the Petain Government’s efforts to determine the war guilt evidently are misdirected. They should be directed towards the discovery of why French politicians did not respond to the Fuehrer’s repeated peace offers. The men really guilty of the war are those who encouraged hate for Germans and unloosed a sadistic treatment of prisoners, which is not mentioned.