So as to save time, we are prepared to adapt ourselves to the Court to the extent that we submit the documents to the Tribunal in bulk, insofar as they refer to a definite problem; but still with the reservation to make those statements upon their contents required in order to understand the whole problem. This possibility, however, is taken away from us, if we must now simply submit the entire documentary material and can make no statements about it at all; for we certainly cannot make any comments on a document if I now, for example, submit 10 pieces altogether for a specific problem.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, the Tribunal will adjourn now for a few minutes to consider this question and will return in a short time and announce their decision so that you can prepare yourself for tomorrow on the lines which they wish.
DR. DIX: Before the Tribunal confer, may I ask only one question. I have understood the course of the discussion up to now in this way: That the difficulty has arisen owing to the fact that as the Russian and French translations are not available, some of the Prosecution are still unable to form an opinion with reference to this material and consequently cannot decide whether they wish to raise objections or not. On the other hand the Tribunal wants to avoid quotations being read here concerning matters on which it has not yet been decided whether the Prosecution want to raise objections. This is the situation which appears to me to be the cause of the difficulties arising at present.
I have not understood the statements of the Tribunal, of His Lordship, to mean—I beg to be corrected if I am wrong—that there is to be a deviation from the already announced decision or from the procedure followed up to now, that we may quote essential and important portions of the documents submitted by us, when they have been admitted as relevant by the Tribunal.
I believe that I am right in my impression that no exception is to be made to this principle and that no basic new decision is to be made here now, but only an interim ruling is being sought: How can we surmount the difficulties that Dr. Horn may not at the moment read individual passages from his documents because the Tribunal is not yet in a position to decide their relevancy and admit them, because the Tribunal cannot yet hear the attitude of the Prosecution?
Before we adjourn, therefore, so that we have a definite basis for our discussion, I should like to ask the Court if my interpretation is correct. Is it now merely a question of finding a way out while basically maintaining the right of the Defense to speak connecting words, words of explanation of the documents, that is, such words without which the documents could not be understood, and to read individual relevant parts, but that on principle only these technical interim questions are to be decided?
I should be grateful to Your Lordship if I could be told if this conception of mine, regarding the nature of these difficulties which have arisen, is correct.
THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now and we will return to Court very shortly and we will consider what you have said.
[A recess was taken.]
THE PRESIDENT: On the 22 March 1946, the Tribunal made this ruling, repeating a ruling of 8 March 1946: