THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Well, the rule of the Tribunal happens to be that they should be handed in, in this Court, at the time that they are being used, as well as their being handed in to somebody for the purpose of translation. That is the rule.
But now perhaps we had better get on as we are taking up too much time over this.
DR. HORN: I have just heard that the German documents which I signed are being procured from the Secretariat General, so I will be able to submit them to the Tribunal with signature, in the German.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
DR. HORN: I should like to continue and explain the afore-mentioned opinion of the legal consequences of the Pact made between France and Russia in 1936, and I refer to Page 3, that is, Page 8 of the document book. I quote:
“Consequently, the only question is whether France, in accepting these treaty obligations, has kept within those limits which, in her relation to Germany have been laid on her by the Rhine Pact.
“This, however, the German Government must deny.
“The Rhine Pact was supposed to achieve the goal of securing peace in Western Europe by having Germany on the one hand, and France and Belgium on the other, renounce for all time employing military force in their relations to each other. If, by the conclusion of the pact, certain reservations to this renunciation of war, going beyond the right of self-defense, were permitted, the political reason for this was, as is generally known, solely the fact that France had already taken on certain alliance obligations towards Poland and Czechoslovakia which she did not want to sacrifice to the idea of absolute peace security in the West. Germany at that time accepted in good faith these reservations to the renunciation of war. She did not object to the treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia, placed on the table at Locarno by the representative of France, only because of the self-understood supposition that these treaties adapted themselves to the structure of the Rhine Pact and did not contain any provisions on the application of Article 16 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, such as are provided for in the new French-Soviet agreements. This was true also of the contents of these special agreements, which came to the knowledge of the German Government at that time. The exceptions permitted in the Rhine Pact did, it is true, not expressly refer to Poland and Czechoslovakia, but were formulated generally. But it was the sense of all negotiations about this matter to find a compromise between the German-French renunciation of war and the desire of France to maintain her already existent pact obligations. If, therefore, France now takes advantage of the abstract formulation of war possibilities allowed for in the Rhine Treaty in order to conclude a new pact against Germany with a highly armed state, if thus in such a decisive manner she limits the scope of the renunciation of war mutually agreed upon with Germany, and if, as set forth above, she does not even observe the stipulated formal juridical limits, then she has created thereby a completely new situation and has destroyed the political system of the Rhine Pact both in theory and literally.”
I will omit the next paragraph and will quote from Page 9 of the document book as follows:
“The German Government have always emphasized during the negotiations of the last years that they would maintain and carry out all obligations of the Rhine Pact as long as the other partners to the Pact also were willing on their part to adhere to this Pact. This natural supposition cannot any longer be regarded as fulfilled by France. In violation of the Rhine Pact, France has replied to the friendly offers and peaceful assurances, made again and again by Germany, with a military alliance with the Soviet Union, directed exclusively against Germany. Therefore the Rhine Pact of Locarno has lost its inner meaning and has ceased to exist in any practical sense. For that reason Germany also on her side does not consider herself bound any longer by this pact which has become void.”