NEW TYPE GERMAN SOLDIER MUST BE CRATED

KURT LINDE, a major general in the German army during World War II and executive director of the German Veterans' Association, writing in the monthly magazine Der Monat:

THE call for the German soldier as a co-defender of the free world did not come from us. But now Germany is again to bear arms, integrated and built into a European defense system. The new German soldier must be different from the German G.I. of World War II, not only in outward appearance. His future status within the state will distinguish him from the former isolation of a special status. He will be and should be : a soldier amidst the people. The new soldier stands in the middle of the political community. The military unit must never be an end in itself but rather a means to an end in the hands of the politician. His education as a citizen will in future not stop at the barracks gate. The new soldier must not feel himself a member of an exclusive body outside the community or as a member with a "preference status." He must feel himself to be one part of a whole body, a link in the chain which interlocks his people and with it the entire free world.

ARMY SHOULD NOT TRY BRAINWASHED PRISONERS

THE LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL, on the trials of former prisoners of war accused of helping the Communists:

THERE is, to many people, an essential injustice in bringing these men, who suffered bitterly, to trial. The injustice is compounded by the fact that no general instructions cover or could cover the behavior of men who are made captives by barbarians. Warfare in Korea brought the new hazard of capture by men who do not recognize international codes for the treatment of prisoners and who permitted no Red Cross inspection or interference.

This, it seems to us, is where the Army of the United States has set foot on a difficult and dangerous road. What in effect is the army saying to men who may be captured in the future? Is it not forcing them to consider two impossible choices: one of a standard of conduct impossibly noble under the terrible circumstances of capture, or the other of death in battle rather than the risk of failing to measure up to such a standard? Such a choice as this is not only hard on morale. It is an immoral one to put up to men facing death or disaster. We are expecting men to rise to standards not one civilian in a million will ever be called upon to meet.

ATTLEE SACRIFICING MORALITY FOR POLITICS

THE FAIR DEALING NEW YORK POST, staunch supporter of both the Truman-Acheson foreign policy and the British Labor Party: