SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: No further order has been given and therefore, My Lord, it is still open to us to object, as I understand the position.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, perhaps we had better deal with it now, then.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: If Your Lordship pleases.
DR. SIEMERS: May I make a few remarks on this point? I believe...
THE PRESIDENT: But we had better hear the objection first, had we not? And then we will hear you afterwards.
DR. SIEMERS: Yes, Mr. President, as you wish. This is a purely formal point. I believe that Sir David erred slightly in referring to Document Raeder-28. There was no objection to this document by the Prosecution, but only against Document Raeder-29.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My friend is quite right; we did not object to the translation of 28. However, My Lord, it falls into the same category as 29, and I would still raise an objection. I apologize to Your Lordship if I conveyed the impression that we had made an objection before.
My Lord, the Number 28 is a letter from General Gamelin to M. Daladier on the 1st of September 1939, in which General Gamelin gives his views as to the problem of the neutrality of Belgium and Luxembourg and contrasts that view with the view of the French Government.
Now, My Lord, I submit that that expression of opinion on the part of General Gamelin is in itself intrinsically too remote from the issues of this Trial to be of any relevance or probative value.
Then, apart from its intrinsic nature, the position is that this was a document which, as I understand from Dr. Siemers’ verification on Page 158, is taken from the White Book of the German Foreign Office, from the secret files of the French General Staff, which could not have been captured until sometime after June 1940. Therefore, as a secondary reason, it can have no relevance to any opinion formed by the Defendant Raeder in September of 1939.