The Calcutta Weekly Notes July 30 1945

Fighting in the jungles of Burma and the swamps of South-East Asia they must have wondered about the prpriety of policies settled at Whitehall which rfused freedom to the local inhabitants and so condemned them to sullen inaction or desperate co-operation with the enemy. [...] The virtual elimination of the Liberal Party—its leader Sir Archibald Sinclair and its economist Sir William Beveridge of “ social security ” fame having suffered defeat—clears the air so to say in British politics and facilitates an uambiguous fight between the forces of progress on one side and of reaction on the other. [...] This is not surprising in view specially of the attitude of the British Government on this prblem since October 1942 when the first official announcement was made in the House of Lords regarding the setting-up of a United Nations Commission for the investigation of War Crimes.. [...] At one time last year Sir Cecil Hurst then Chairman of the Commission had spoken darkly of practical difficulties the difficulty for example created by the difference between the legal systems and procedure of Britain and America on one hand and the Continental coutries on the other. [...] It is unnecesary to multiply arguments but one may quote the preamble to the Hague Convention (iv) of 1907 which ran in part as follows :— "Until a more complete code of the laws of war can be drawn up the High Contracting Parties deem it expedient to declare that in cases not covered by the rules adopted by them the inhbitants and the belligerents remain under protection and governance