Furthermore, the presentation of the reports concerning the breaches of the Hague Convention has been demanded. I believe that this motion cannot be rejected with the remark that it is not concerned with the question whether such breaches were committed on the other side too. This fact, in my opinion, is of importance in two ways. First of all, to reach a just decision one has to make sure whether the conduct on the other side was really correct and beyond reproach and it is furthermore of importance because it involves the question of whether the defendants were not resorting to retaliatory measures.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you have dealt with each topic with the exception of Numbers 20, 23, and 28. Number 20 is Mr. Winston Churchill’s book; 23 is Tchitcherin’s, and 28 is General Fuller’s book. We will take those.
DR. STAHMER: Book Number 20, Churchill’s _Step by Step_—here we are concerned with statements in which Churchill at one point expresses his opinion as to whether England, by the Naval Treaty of 1935, had not sanctioned Germany’s renunciation of the Versailles Treaty.
Furthermore, this book is of importance as far as I can see it now, in evaluating the extent to which England rearmed, and finally at various points in that book there are references to Hitler’s personality.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I say with the greatest respect to Dr. Stahmer that he has reinforced my point, that if Dr. Stahmer is putting forward the thesis that in order to reach a proper decision on the matters before the Tribunal it is necessary to investigate whether other belligerents have committed breaches of conventions, then, as I say, I join issue with him _in toto_. I cannot add to the matter. But with regard to Mr. Churchill, Dr. Stahmer makes three points; one, that some passages in the book give color to the idea that by the naval agreement the validity of the Versailles Treaty was affected. That is a point to which there are obviously many answers, including the facts that France was a party to the treaty and the United States was a party to a treaty in the same terms. But clearly Mr. Churchill’s view expressed in a book, as to the legal effect of one treaty or another, is in my submission irrelevant.