Unconditional Surrender

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 230, 19 November 1943, Page 3

Unconditional Surrender

T was made quite clear in Mr. Churchill’s Mansion House speech that our terms to Germany remain unconditional surrender. In other words the United Nations will stop the war when the Germans throw down their arms, and not sooner. They will not bargain, negotiate, or confer with the enemy-except on incidental matters-as long as they are meeting with organised resistance. Peace in short will be imposed and not arranged. But that is not quite such a simple matter as it sounds; and we do not mean simple to achieve but simple to understand. We know that it will not be a simple matter to bring the enemy down physically; but it is apparently also a complicated matter to reduce him legally. In an attempt to bring out the implications of unconditional surrender Professor Berriedale Keith a few weeks ago filled a column and a-half of the Manchester Guardian, and then left something to the imagination. The phrase means of course what it says- surrender without conditions; but while that is plain enough as it ‘affects the surrenderers, it means some things to those who enforce the surrender which most of us have not yet thought about. In Professor Keith’s view it leaves Germany legally naked-stripped of all her rights under the Hague Convention and the other sanctions of international law. This means in turn that it leaves the United Nations free of any obligation to observe existing German laws-and in fact under an obligation to abolish them. It is not even necessary, he thinks, that there should-be a unilateral modification of international law, or for a long time any agreement with Germany. The conquerors themselves must both rule and legislate until all trace of the thing they have been fighting has gone, which implies that anything less’ than unconditional surrender is legally ruled out. But in case it should be thought that what lies ‘ahead of Germany is the substitution of one tyranny for another, we must remember the terms of the Atlantic Charter and the FourPower Agreements with Russia.