First of all, the group concerning the Polish question. In my document book, you will find a document, Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 200 (Document Number Ribbentrop-200) which I am submitting to the Tribunal for judicial notice. In this document, Prime Minister Chamberlain, in a letter to Hitler dated 22 August 1939, defines his attitude regarding the basis for conflict between Germany and Poland. In this connection he emphasizes the question of minorities as one of the main causes of the conflict. As proof of the fact that this minority question already played an important part when the Polish State came into being, I refer to the document, Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 72 (Document Number Ribbentrop-72), which I submit to the Tribunal for judicial notice. This contains observations by the German Peace Delegation on the peace conditions.
In a further document—Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 74 (Document Number Ribbentrop-74), which I submit to the Tribunal for judicial notice—the President of the Supreme Council of the Allied and Associated Powers, Clemenceau, once again draws the attention of the Polish Prime Minister, Paderewski, to this problem. May I offer as proof...
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, I want to explain the position of the Prosecution.
We have not yet received these documents, and therefore we are in the position that we have been able to make only a tentative selection of those to which we object. All this book of documents has been objected to as far as we know. I want only to make it clear that we are admitting, without protest, the course taken by Dr. Horn on the basis which Your Lordship announced yesterday, that he is putting them in en bloc, subject to our right to object formally when we have the documents.
Therefore it is only right that we must preserve our position, because I have arranged, and all my colleagues agree, that there should be objections to a number of these documents on our present state of knowledge.
DR. HORN: May I ask Your Lordship to hear me for a moment?
THE PRESIDENT: Do you want to say something? Were you going to add something to what Sir David had said?
DR. HORN: In view of the objections raised by the Prosecution I request that a general ruling be made now as to whether the Defense have to submit to disadvantages arising out of technical deficiencies and for which they are not responsible, and whether our already limited presentation of evidence shall be made practically impossible by our being unable to discuss even in a general way, documentary material with the Prosecution and the Tribunal.
May I ask, therefore, that the presentation of documents in their shortened form, as requested by the Tribunal yesterday, be postponed until the document books are available.
THE PRESIDENT: The difficulty seems entirely to arise from the fact that your document books are not ready. That is what causes the difficulty. If the document books had been ready and had been submitted to the Prosecution, the Prosecution would be in a position to object to them. That is the reason why Sir David is objecting in this provisional form. But if you have witnesses whom you are going to call, why do you not call them while your books are being got ready? That seems to the Tribunal to be the obvious course.