Italian Fascist War Crimes in Ethiopia - Societa italiana di storia ...

Italian Fascist War Crimes in Ethiopia 89
4. Being colonially minded, and/or racially prejudiced, it considere d
Ethiopia outside the confines of European statesmanship. This view had
earlier been expounded by the Fo reign Under-Secre t a r y, Sir Orme
Sargent, who, on 22 August 1942, wrote that he felt “doubts” about
“admitting Abyssinia into the sacred circle of the Allied Nations with all
that implies both during the war and at the peace settlement.” 16
The Foreign Office was bitterly opposed to the trial of Italians for war crimes
in Ethiopia, but was in a predicament. It was difficult to argue that crimes committed
there in 1935–36 should be excluded from consideration on the grounds
that they had occurred prior to outbreak of the European war, in September
1939. China, a powerful ally, had insisted on trying Japanese war criminals for
the entire period of the Japanese invasion, starting in the late 1920s or early
1930s, i.e. half a decade or so earlier. Major Adams’ question was therefore not
appreciated by the Foreign Office, but it had to be answered.
The difficulty in doing so was explained to Eden by a Foreign Office official,
William Allen, in a departmental minute, of 2 August. Proposing an answer for
the Minister, he observed:
The answer is, I think, that the United Nations Commission for the
I n vestigation of War Criminals will deal only with war crimes committed
during the present war against nationals of the United Nations. But we
must be a little careful in replying on these lines since we know, for
i n s t a n c e, that the Chinese are going to press for all crimes committed by the
Japanese in China since 1931 to be brought within the Commission’s scope.
Another official, the legal adviser, Gerald Fitzmaurice, also took up a defensive
position. Referring to Adams’s “petition,” he noted on the following day
that the major’s question as to whether the Government would send Badoglio
for trial deserved an unqualified “No.” Elaborating on this, and by implication
attacking Adams’s good faith, he observed, not without some truth, that the
major’s object was “more to create prejudice against Marshal Badoglio in view
of the present situation than anything genuinely to do with War Crimes.” 17
Guided by his officials, and particularly by the warning that the Chinese
wanted trials going back well before 1935, Eden answered in the vaguest terms