VLE at. SvUlu > ww 2 S Federated Press news editor on leave of absence while serving in the Infantry. His opinions are his own, but he believes his opinions are shared by GI’s in general This belief is based on con- tact with hundreds of them during two years in the army, four months of which were spent in intimate contact With 3,000 of them at Stalag IX-B, at Bad Orb, Germany. A member of the American Newspaper Guild since its birth, he also believes no un- ion man will find much to dis- agree with in this outlook on what to do with Germany). A FELLOW Gl. remark- ed to me not so long ago that it was his first sight of a German child that put iron in his soul. : “Looking at that red cheeked, sausage-legged kid,”’ this combat veteran wryly said, “I couldn’t get out of my mind the comparison with the spindly legs and pale faces of the children of Italy, France and Belgium. By starving millions of other children to death, Hitler had kept loyal to him the parents of that German: kid.” This would soldier’s seem, remark, it contains the best answer to those who now argue that the German. people. have suffered too from the war and should not be made to pay for ‘our Prison mans in the towns through which we passed were better dressed and looked better fed than the English people. Once inside the prison, we found that if we had been able to pay black market prices, we could have had plenty of meat, but- ter and other food from the civilians in our area, The story of how we Ameri- can prisoners were starved during those bitter weeks be- fore liberation is too well known. to be repeated now, but perhaps you have forgotten the Germans’ excuse. To all our protests the Germans always rephed that the German people were being starved to death and that if they had the food, we would have got plenty. Af- ter liberation, an examination of the. warehouses in our region and the cellars of the civilians disclosed that they had been eating well, and drinking well too. Those who now argue for merey toward the German and against what they are pleased to call “slave labor” probably have never seen what a Ger- man mine can do to a man. Well, I have. And when I read now of French, Belgian, Ukrainian or Yugoslav farmers plowing fields in which thous- Nazis ran out of coal at the Buchenwald concen- tration camp and were unable to cremate bodies of the ‘tortured dead before a spearhead of Gen. Patton's Third U.S. Army atrived. This trailer load of bodies was found outside the crematory. the crimes of Hitler, Goering and their Nazi hordes. The plain fact is that this crime paid—the German people as well as Hitler. Another plain fact is that Hitler’s murderous course which loaded German homes with French wines, Italian - cheeses, Russian furs, Nor- wegian fish, Danish butter and other loot also killed so many other Europeans that there is not enough labor in the Allied nations for the task of reconstruction. It would seem simple justice then that for five years of comparatively good living, the German people should pay with its labor power. Marching .to a German pris- on camp last winter, I was surprised to see that the Ger- clothing. PAGE 14 — MAGAZINE SECTION Camp By Sergeant Jack Phillips The Nazis were said to reserve their worst cruel- ties for Poles and Russians, but this American prisoner -of war might dispute the claim. Little but bones, skin and a spark of life, he is the victim of a few months’ imprisonment. ands of these mines were sown, I ask whether that far- mer who fought on our side should: be blown to bits or whether “slave labor’ from Germany should go out, find ’ those mines and remove them. Left: Two children who died of starvation ter: Face beaten by S.S. troopers, a ci in six days. Right: An aged Polish p Certainly there were Ger- mans who opposed Hitler. The official War Department pictures which accompany this article are eloquent tes- timony to that. They are-also evidence that so long as their own hellies were full, the German people in general were willing to permit such atrocities in their midst. Forty million lives were lost to the greed of the German war machine. Is it too much to ask that five or six million German soldiers who enjoyed the role of conqueror for so long should now pay back some of that loss ? It is also commonly accepted that useful labor is about the Let the German earn his way back into respectable society and “in earning, perhaps he will learn of democracy he works best cure for a criminal. something too and its ways as among the peoples of Europe. Some may argue that the ordinary German is not a crim- inal. Perhaps he is not in the sense of a Nazi hatchet man, or an SS trooper, or a U-boat but common law held that the ac- complice after the fact is as guilty as the criminal himself. commander, has always Ss I have some acquaintance with the criminal tendencies of simple German soldiers other than those covered by the rules of war. When we were captured in the Ardennes battle last winter, the German _ soldier— hundreds of him—robbed us of our watches, our money, our little remaining food, our over- coats, overshoes and even shoes in some instances. And one evening weeks later, standing at tthe prison fence, we watched a column of Ger- man soldiers march past, car- rying under their arms Ameri- can Red Cross packages which were intended for hunger-rid- den stomachs and which, the German authorities had said, were destroyed that afternoon in a strafing raid by American planes. The German soldier already looks upon Americans as soft- nat Belsen find peace in death. Cen- vilian prisoner at Belsen takes his first drink risoner, freed at the Dossel camp, delouses his " hearted fools although he Continued from. Page 123 ally had tc admit we were ter soldiers tham he like; think. What do the humanj. ians back home think qi his reaction if he is allows: ge unpunished for his of looting and rape? \ During our stay: in German prison we held pi lic forums on many iss One day we discussed we to. do with Germany after — victory. And, the vote of § 500: or so..GI’s at the for was, unanimous in the—bei/§ that Germany should mil reparations for the colos} damage she had done to world; not in gold, that V failed after the last war, in the only power she weo'} have left and the only thi| of value to anyone else || labor. : : It may be argued that 2 men suffering starvation, - and vermin in a German pa camp could not be too objec in approaching the problen. what. to do ‘with Germ Neither were, I imagine, | men of 1776 when they fra | the _ Declaration of Indep:| ence, which still serves world as a model. of democ | and ‘a gospel of: humanity. i = 8 Soviet As} gions which give evidence Soviet policys Due north China and Mongolia “are §— Buriat-Mongol and Ye Autonomous Soviet Reput inhabited by peoples of the low race. Wendell “Wi wrote in One World: “I found in Yakutsk evid) of one of the Soviet Un greatest achievements and — which the best and most gressive Americans must plaud: its handling of the rible problem of national racial minorities. . . As fa I could see, they lived as | Russians lived; they held office; they wrote their poetry and had _ their theatre . . . Elective of § were usually filled, I was IE by Yakuts. Schools taught languages. War posters a # the streets were captionec i both Russian and Yakut.” It is this policy, long es: lished in the relations~ ar | the:- Soviet. nations, which j expressed iby the Soviet ¢ gation at. San Franciseo in lation to all colonial and_ pendent peoples when it | posed. that-. imdependence '§ made the aim of the trus 4 ship ~plan. The- Soviet™ for fi policy necessarily reflects ¥ nature and basie features the Soviet system. That ! plains the popularity of f vast colonial area of the } East. aS . SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 18