THE PEACE IN PREPARATION
. . . THE PEACE IN PREPARATION . . . THE hope for a peaceful, stable world seemed more remote than ever this week as the statesmen of the victorious Allies continued to falter and stumble in the...
...COUNT TWO: Crimes against peace, in which "all the defendants with divers other persons" engaged in "planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of a "war of aggression, or war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances...
...Concerned over electoral gains made by non-Communist parties, Marshal Klementi E. Voroshilov, chairman of the Allied Control Commission in Hungary, ordered the- merger of all Hungarian political parties into a single'common list which would give the people no chance,to express political preference between different candidates...
...Douglas MacAr-thur would resign if an inter-Allied commission were placed in charge of his operations in Japan...
...Gen...
...Comdr...
...In Argentina, where one week before he was a "prisoner" on a penal island, Juan Peron staged a fantastic comeback to take control of the reins of government again and restore the status quo which existed before he was bounced out of office...
...The accused, who will be tried in the Nazi shrine-city of Neurenberg Nov...
...There was many another indication of mounting tension and strife among the Allies...
...New Concept Of Justice Creating brand new international law as they went along and establishing a new precedent of justice, under which the accuser may try and sit in judgment of the accused, the Allied war crimes officials named 24 individuals in their indictment—Herman Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Rudolf Hess, Robert Ley, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Karl Doenitz, Erich Rae-der, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Hjalmar Schacht, Walther Funk, Franz von Papen, Ernest Kal-tenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Martin Bormann, Wilhelm Frick, Fritz Sauckel, Albert Speer, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Julius Streicher, Hans Fritzsche, Constantin von Neurath, and Baldur von Schirach...
...Rebellions in South America, armed uprisings in Asia against the white man's colonial rule, wrangling over Palestine, new strife over Greece and Turkey, inter-Allied disputes over the joint control of Germany, and a new cooling off in relations between Russia and her Anglo-American partners—all these cast a dark shadow over the path to peace...
...The French Election The people of France went to the polls last Sunday in record-breaking numbers—women were entitled to vote for the first time...
...Reports that the Red general also declared a state of siege and launched a series of arrests of political opponents were published in the U. S. and Britain, but were denied in Moscow...
...The State Department revealed the text of a directive to Gen...
...They also approved, but by a greatly reduced margin—9,582,210 to 4,841,249—de Gaulle's request that the Assembly function as an interim legislative body while ;the new constitution was being drafted...
...The dispute over Hungary was accentuated by political developments in that country...
...The French voted overwhelmingly—13,887,082 to 554,750—to support de Gaulle's demand for a new constitution and a new republic...
...Indonesian nationalists responded by demanding absolute independence from the Dutch, asserting that the alternative was "war or revolution...
...20, stand indicted on the newly created principle that leaders of an aggressor nation can be treated as international criminals who are individually accountable for their actions...
...Some were indicted on all four counts, others on fewer...
...The indictment of the leaders consisted of four counts, backed by nearly 30,000 words detailing the nature of the crimes alleged...
...THE PEACE IN PREPARATION . . . THE hope for a peaceful, stable world seemed more remote than ever this week as the statesmen of the victorious Allies continued to falter and stumble in the midst of high-tension developments on all the continents of the earth...
...The new regime announced that it had seized power only to provide Venezuela with "free, direct, universal suffrage by secret ballot...
...Dwight Eisenhower establishing harsh American policy in-Germany, but Eisenhower, in reporting on American occupation experience under that directive thus far, warned that the situation is now "explosive" and that Germany is on the verge of economic disaster...
...Bloodshed continued in French Indo-China and the Dutch East Indies as colonial peoples sought to throw off the yoke of Western imperialism...
...Elsewhere in the Orient the news was almost all bad...
...Eisenhower revealed the extent to which Soviet authorities seek to control public opinion in Berlin when, in pointing out that each of the four legal political parties is permitted to publish a newspaper, he said: "The newspapers of each party are allocated sufficient newsprint by the Soviet authorities to print 100,000 copies each, except that the Communist paper is permitted to print 200,000...
...American officials announced that the U. S. would not recognize Russia's claim to the Baltic states and "certain other territories," Still another evidence of friction was to be found in the dispute over Hungary...
...Charles de Gaulle had led the fight for an affirmative reply to the latter two...
...British officials, for instance, expressed concern over the disclosure that Soviet troops, equipped with freshly arrived tanks arid artillery, are maneuvering in southern Bulgaria near the border with European Turkey...
...Progress In Japan Discord between Russia and the United States was not confined to developments in Europe...
...They had three decisions to make: 1) To pick the members of their National Assembly...
...In the race for seats in the Assembly, the Communists scored the greatest victory when it captured 146 seats, compared with 135 for de Gaulle's Socialist-Catholic Popular Republican Party, and 135 for Leon Blum's Socialists...
...The American commander reported that "informal reports indicate a fair and impartially supervised election in Berlin would not support the present Com,-munist Party dominance" of the city's government...
...Public attention was diverted away from these unpleasant facts of international life when the press blew up to circus size and splashed all over its front pages the announcement that the Big Four—Russia, Britain, France, and the United States—had indicted 24 of Adolf Hitler's henchmen on charges of engaging in a quarter century of conspiracy which culminated in the world's worst war and the mass murder of an estimated 10 million persons...
...British armed might was thrown into Java to aid the Dutch in their fight against the native uprising...
...C. S. Seely in this issue...
...MacArthur, his aides, and Japanese.officials acting under American orders ordered the Nippon school system reorganized so as to provide instruction emphasizing the ways of peace instead of war, granted amnesty to nearly 1,000,000 Japanese prisoners, including Communists, repealed repressive religious laws, freed the Japanese motion picture industry from all government domination in order to "reflect the democratic aspirations of the Japanese people," smashed Japan's narcotic industry, source of 90 per cent of the world's illegal drugs, and took the first steps toward breaking the economic grip of the Zaibatsu, the oligarchy of family financial giants which has ruled Japan's economic life for so long...
...2) To decide whether to have a new constitution and a Fourth Republic, which would be established by the Assembly, and 3...
...Germany Faces Disaster This joint Allied action in indicting Nazi war criminals was, unfortunately, the only evidence available last week of working unity among the victorious Powers...
...COUNT FOUR: Crimes against humanity—"murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts against any civilian population before or during the war...
...Meanwhile, the process of breaking down Japan's system of militarism, imperialism, and feudalism continued on a wide front...
...Bitter debate broke out on a variety of issues, including the policy of the various occupying nations in Germany...
...or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of any . . . crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal...
...In Venezuela, a cabinet headed by Romulo Betancourt, a former Communist who broke with that movement, captured control of the government under the sponsorship of a revolutionary junta which smashed all opposition in a week of violence and armed conflict...
...S. will not use its armed might to curb colonial peoples of the Far East, but will extend mediation services if requested...
...All papers are subject to Soviet censorship...
...To determine whether the Assembly should be restricted to the drafting of the constitution or be allowed also to perform the normal functions of government as a provisional government...
...American policy was set forth by John Carter Vincent, the State Department's Far Eastern Affairs Director, who announced that the'U...
...Massed expressions of support from organized labor preceded Peron's return to power...
...Soviet officials, operating through the controlled press and radio of Russia, renewed their demand for a share in the control of Japan, but continued to encounter unyielding resistance in Washington...
...See articles by Louis Clair, Louis Fischer, Fred Rodell, and Lt...
...COUNT THREE: Crimes against humanity—violation of the laws or customs of war including murder, ill treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population . . . murder of prisoners of war . . . killing of hostages . . . plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages or devastation not justified by military necessity...
...The British Government, and presumably the U. S. as well, entered a vigorous protest against the proposed five-year Russian-Hungary trade pact, London complaining that "one of the Allies could be prepared to conclude so large an agreement with an enemy country before the other Allies had made peace with it and with little or no consultation with them...
...Dispatches from Tokyo again emphasized the prediction that Gen...
...Explosive political action in the Western Hemisphere was concentrated in two Latin American countries-Venezuela and Argentina...
...The counts were: COUNT ONE: The common plan or conspiracy to overthrow the treaty of Versailles, re-arm Germany, secure lebensraum (living room) for the Reich at the expense of her neighbors—and do this by any means including "force and aggressive war...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 43
