WHERE THE NEWS ENDS

...This unprecedented burden is...

...But his general record is one to live down, rather than to live up to...

...Where the News Ends By William Henry Chamberlin A Scandal Exposed AN ARMY commission headed by Justice Gordon Simpson, of the Texas Supreme Court, has performed a useful service to American ideals of justice and decency by recommending the commutation of death sentences imposed in the so-called Malmedy case...

...It runs counter to all precedents...

...Of the large sum demanded, something like three-fourths is to go for the cost of past and future wars...

...Usually nations promise their soldiers reforms at the end of a war—and the promises are seldom kept...

...That meant easier living, less work and taxes, more scope for individual free play...

...but a few characteristic statements are worth citing...

...IT IS GENERALLY taken for granted that during war-time, expenditures for social services are curtailed...

...An Editorial— War and Welfare a MERICANS who have long memories or ZX some acquaintance with history may well gasp with wonder at the President's $42,000,000,000 budget proposal...

...It is a long document...

...One of the post effective forms of preparation is to insure all of our people of a full and free citizenship in a healthy society...

...In short the whole procedure, at described in detail in this •dMavtt...

...This was a trial by an American military court of a number of German soldiers who were accused of having killed American prisoners at Malmedy, in Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge...

...am Atnk*»v* ™ Kfyyfrfr ONElCAlWOTJT^fclhat pMsiddot Trstman picked Ust lse**-available candid** to succeed Generfi Jisuafcall as Secretary" of State, it was only ft little over tfcree years ago trsit tbe new Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, thert Undersecretary of State, was sharing the platform with the notorious Red Dean of Canterbury at a meeting of the Council of American-Soviet Friendship...

...But one must wait for concrete proofs...

...One hopes that the new Secretary, by swift, vigorous and uncompromising action on such issues as the Berlin blockade, the speeding up of the North Atlantic pact, the working out of effective roadblocks for communism in China, the building up of a strong productive democratic Germany, will prove that he has thoroughly broken with his past...

...There must * be no depression...

...Whatever shoves up annual production lightens the burden...

...The 74 defendants were held in solitary confinement at Schwabisch Hall, and were subjected to beating and other form3 of torture...

...We have undertaken great tasks which commit us to the use of all our wealth and all our power over a long period...

...But now, having finished six years of the bloodiest and most expensive fighting in history, we are confronted with a budget which, in dollars, amounts to more than our entire national income during the lowest years of our late depression...

...But however the figures are looked at, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that .a sum in the neighborhood of $20,000,000,000 is to be allotted to expenditures which we would not be called upon to make if we were actually in a state of peace...

...The name of a man who had never been identified with' the appeasement policy would command far more confidence in the stability of outforeign policy at home and abroad...

...This affidavit is in my possession...

...THESE "HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE methods" are spelled out in appalling detail in an affidavit which Willis M Everett, Jr., American officer appointed as counsel for the defendants, submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States...

...readers of The New Leader know, caused by the division' of the world into two parts, one of which is controlled by ambitious and hostile Soviet Russia...

...This was surely one of the gravest errors of judgment ever committed by a high diplomatic official...

...It is true that liter in Jus career Acheson changed his tune to such a degree that he won the honor of a rebuke by name from Molotov...

...But it is also a time when we must give to every citizen the sense of sharing in all the good that American life affords...

...It was in line with Acheson s close friendship with the arch-appeaser of Stalin, Harry Hopkins and his general identifier - tion with the discredited policies of Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam...

...The American investigators staged mock trials, ending in death sentences and then persuaded many of the defendants to sign false confessions, under the impression that they had been condemned to death and might as well absolve ?others by taking the responsibility on themselves...

...A budget is heavy or light only in relation to the nation's total output...

...One feels that the decision of the investigating commission, while it was a step in the right direction, did not go far enough...

...Both from the point of view of insurance against depression and that of the maintenance of morale, the President's social service program is calculated to lighten the weight of taxation...

...Carrying through such tasks as this nation has undertaken requires keeping our productive system at top-notch efficiency...

...Surely individuals convicted on evidence extorted by such grossly improper methods are entitled to a new fair trial...

...In commuting death sentences to life imprisonment and less severe penalties the commission acted on two grounds In the first place, its members expressed the opinion: "It i$ extremely doubtful that an American court martial would fix any punishment more severe than life imprisonment if it were trying members of the American Army who committed like offenses in the heat of battle...

...The serious question is whether we can bear this double burden...

...Even the proposed expansions in the field of civil rights have an important bearing in this relation...

...The rjnly-aueartion.which the intelligent citizen can ask with regard to each item earmarked for national defense is this: "Will this particular way of spending this much money give us the best return in the way of defense preparations...

...a confirmed In some points at least by the verdict of the investigation commission, fairly reeked with the odor of a Gestapo or a Soviet state trial...

...One reason why we have before us at present such an unusual sum total is that the President proposes to undertake simultaneously war preparations on a gigantic scale and a broad-gauge advance in such fields as housing, social security, health, education and the development of our natural resources...

...It is somewhaf difficult to draw a line between these two items...

...The second reason for not taking any lives in the Malmedy* case is still more compelling...

...To cite'directly from the affidavit* "The investigators would forge the names of certain of plaintiffs' (Major Everett's clients) superior officers to confessions or statements which would completely detail and point out the purported guilt of another accused...

...The burden of military expenditures must be in part counterbalanced by savings in the social service field...

...The Marshall Plan appropriations, for example, fall under both classifications...

...The fiscal, economic, social and educational projects included in the President's program are precisely of the sort to keep our great machine rolling...

...Wars have always meant a time of belt-tightening...

...We are preparing for a war which we hopeiwill not come, which we shall do all we can to avoid...

...It was a disgrace to the American flag that such brutality and chicanery could be employed...

...We can never hope to rival Nazis or Communists in brutality or to impress the Germans favorably by using the kind of methods that would be normal in the SS...

...We can make a strong and favorable impression by insisting on evenhanded, impartial justice, by showing that it is brutality We resent, whether committed hy Nazi guards in Birchen w aid or by American "investigators" in Schwabisch Hall...

...This surely underlines a principle that should have governed the conduct of the war crimes trials: that none should be punished except for acts so outrageous and-barbarous that they would have called for prosecution and retribution if committed by the soldiers of the victorious armies...

...All honor to Major Everett, to Judge Charles Wennerstrum and to other Americans whose struggle for this kind of justice, if it is known in Germany, will have the best kind of "reeducational" effect...

...But men have always envisioned as a reward for battle's hardships a "piping time of peace...

...For, , in the restrained language of the commission, "highly questionable methods which cannot be condoned" were used in obtaining the "evidence" and "confessions" on which the Malmedy verdicts were based...

...There must be no playing out of men.or of jtnatarisls or of morale...

...Then they would confront these young German soldiers with one or more of these forged statements and induce them to sign confessions to acts never committed by them . .. "The American prosecutors would make many threats of violence and torture directed toward the mothers, fathers, sisters, wives and children of various accused unless they signed complete dictated confessions of acts and deeds never committed by them, and acts and deeds of other accused never witnessed by them...

...And severe punishment for the individuals responsible for these methods would do more to create confidence in the reality of American justice in Germany than almost any step that could be taken...