MARSHAL: If it please the Tribunal, may I report that the Defendant Streicher will be absent from this session of Court.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal rules that evidence as to the injustice of the Versailles Treaty or whether it was made under duress is inadmissible, and it therefore rejects Volume 3 of the documents on behalf of the Defendant Hess.
DR. SEIDL: Mr. President, Your Honors. Since Volume 3 of the document book for the Defendant Rudolf Hess is not admissible as documentary evidence, I am, so far as the submission of documents is concerned, at the end of my submission of evidence. Now, we are further concerned only with the affidavit of Ambassador Gaus, which I have already submitted, and I ask you not to decide on the admissibility of this document until I have had opportunity to present arguments on the relevance of it and of the secret treaty. But I should like to point out that with this affidavit only the facts and the contents of this secret treaty are to be proved; and therefore I shall read only excerpts from it, so that other events and the history prior to the treaty are not to be demonstrated by me.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Seidl, we understand that this affidavit of the witness Gaus is now being translated and is going to be submitted to the various prosecutors. They will then inform us of their position, and we shall be able to see whether it is admissible or not, and the Prosecution will likewise be able to tell us whether they want to have the Ambassador here for the purpose of cross-examining him.
DR. SEIDL: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: So we must postpone that until we get the translations.
DR. SEIDL: I had then the further intention of calling the defendant himself as a witness. In view of his attitude as to the question of the competency of this Court, he has asked me, however, to dispense with this procedure. I therefore forego the testimony of the defendant as a witness and have no further evidence to put in at this point.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
Then the Tribunal will now deal with the case against the Defendant Ribbentrop.
DR. HORN: Your Lordship, Your Honors, my client, Joachim von Ribbentrop, had instructed me to make the following statement for him at the beginning of the evidence: