A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
AS the Nuremberg trial winds its slow length along the problem of a permanent record of the trial becomes more acute. It is immensely important that many of the damning documents cited by the prosecution, and many of the admissions extracted from the prisoners, should be put on public record, and there is all the material for a volume of fascinating interest. But who is to write it? The matter, I know, has been considered, and various names have been discussed. But the persons most competent have not the leisure either to attend the trial long enough to get the necessary atmosphere or to concentrate on the actual writing of the book. So something that is urgently needed seems likely to go by default, unless indeed, which ought not to be impossible, one of the counsel engaged—British, American or French—felt equal to rendering this most necessary service. But lawyers have not always adequate literary gifts, and what is needed here is a book that would present the arresting drama of Nuremberg against the vaster and more tragic drama of the war as a whole. There exist, of course, ver- batim reports of the whole proceedings, but they have already attained a volume so formidable as to serve no useful purpose except as a quarry from which information on this aspect or that of the issues raised at Nuremberg can be unearthed by patient excavators in future years. The conclusion, I am afraid, is that what might be the book of the season—or longer—will never be written.
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