Professor Gebhardt has testified on the stand that Grawitz caused the bacterial cultures to be sent from the Hygiene Institute. What were the usual channels for such transmissions and in the Hygiene Institute who was responsible for them?
A The shipment of cultures of living bacteria was in the hands of the Chief of the Bacteriological Department. In the middle of 1942 the person who was in charge of this department frequently changed because to a greater and greater extent we were fixing up field laboratories for the army and men had to be taken from my institute to fill those positions. Consequently I do not know who, in June or July, was chief of that department.
Q Mr. President, in document book MRUGOWSKI, Mrugowsky Document No. 4 is an extract from the Reich Law Gazette 1917. I do not want to read this at this time because the passage is not herein contained. In other words I shall do so later but not at the moment.
Was Professor Gebhardt one of the scientists to whom such gas gangrene cultures would be sent without further ado if he requested them?
A In this Reich Law Gazette which you just mentioned there is printed a law regarding the shipment of bacterial cultures which was valid in Germany since 1917. Here it says that chiefs of clinics and hospitals were permitted to receive such cultures. It is a matter of course that Professor Gebhardt, as chief of a hospital clinic of 1,000 beds, was among those permitted to receive then. Consequently there was no need for police permission, which a lay person would have had to have, nor did we have to inquire to what use these cultures were to be put.
It is the custom in German clinics that scientific work is carried on animals, and frequently, of course, bacteria and germs of other sorts are used. When the chief of so large a clinic asks for cultures, no bacteriologist would consider it necessary to inquire more precisely in to the use to which these cultures were to be put. That would certainly have been construed as a scientific indiscretion.
Q You know that the witness Sofia Maczka testified that Veronika Kraska died of tetanus. This is on 1436 of the English record and 1447 of the German record of 10 January 1947. Were tetanus cultures bred by the Hygienic institute?
A We had a considerable collection of cultures in our institute including tetanus cultures which we acquired from another institute. They were in powder form in little glass test tubes and were never opened. We did not engage in the breeding of such tetanus bacilli. We used the Meuser method of investigating tetanus and not the method involving bacteriological cultures if the question ever arose.
Q Gebhardt and Fischer on May 1943 at the 3rd Conference of the consulting physicians reported on their experiments Did you hear this report?
A No, I did not hear these reports.
Q Why not? Weren't you at the conference?
A I was present but at the same time there was a meeting of the hygienic sector which I attended. Dr. Gebhardt's report took place in the large meeting room of the surgical department, and since we were discussing problems ourselves, I believe about typhus I attended it rather than Professor Gebhardt's lecture.
Q I come now to the sea-water experiments, of which you are also accused. Did you take any part in these sea-water experiments?
A No, no part at all.
Q When did you first hear of these experiments?
A On the day of the arraignment.
Q You know that the Prosecution, in the cross-examination of Professor Karl Brandt, mentioned the committee for drinking water utensils. What was the task of this committee?
A This committee was part of the Reich Ministry for Armaments and War Production. The purpose of it originally was to make uniform the drinking water utensils for sterilizing water for the troops. Many power firms produced their own equipment and it was no longer possible to keep using these many types of drinking water equipment nor to use them. Consequently, unification was to be undertaken and for this reason this drinking water committee was formed. However, I did not concern myself with this problem in general, but turned to a special problem.
Q You concerned yourself with a special problem. What was that special problem?
A This was the problem of purifying water which had been poisoned during an imaginary combat and this making it potable for the population of cities without endangering their health. Particular attention was given to the question of mustard gas poisoning, and the question was debated in what form this mustard gas, which had been put into drinking water, could be made harmless. At that time, from the Reich Department for Water, Land, and Air Hygiene, there was a test in this matter which was to be carried out on German water systems. The committee I mentioned concerned itself with this problem.
Q You were a member of this committee?
A Yes.
Q Did it meet often?
AAs far as I know, it met twice.
Q Did the conferences of this committee have anything to do with making sea water potable?
A Not the slightest.
Q In your official activities did you have anything else to do with seawater, or with making it potable?
A No, nothing.
Q Were there any connections between the Committee and the sea-water experiments?
A I knew of none.
Q Mr. President, I submit now Mrugowsky Document No. 5, which is on page 45 of the document book, as Mrugowsky Exhibit 14. This is an affidavit by Dr. Werner Hasse in Berlin-Friedenau.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel, did you give the last exhibit to which you referred - I think it was Mrugowsky Document Number 4 - the number 14? Did you offer that? Did you offer Number 14?
DR. FLEMMING: Not yet, no.
THE PRESIDENT: Should not this exhibit you are now offering then be Number 14?
DR. FLEMMING: Yes, the one I am now submitting should be Number 14. Let me repeat. Mrugowsky 37 is Number 12; 38, the third from the bottom in the table of contents, is Number 13; and Mrugowsky 5 now becomes Mrugowsky 14.
THE PRESIDENT: And I understood you to give this exhibit number as 15. Possible I misunderstood you.
DR. FLEMMING: No, 14. I may omit reading the first two paragraphs of Document Mrugowsky No. 5 of this affidavit and begin With the words "Prof. Dr. Mrugowsky" on page 45, third paragraph:
"Professor Dr. Dr. Joachim Mrugowsky, the director of the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS in Berlin, and I, together with other gentlemen, were members of the Commission for Drinking Water Equipment.
"This commission is supposed to have been founded by order of Professor Dr. Karl Brandt in the Reich Ministry Speer.
"The commission met only twice in all. The only problem which was discussed was the protection of the central water system of the large cities in case of gas warfare and the provision of portable drinking water installations. The commission never dealt with the question of making sea water potable or any other questions concerning sea water."
Q. You know the Document Number NO-154, Prosecution Exhibit Number 446, in which poisoned water is tested after it has been made harmless. Can you say something about that?
A. So far as I remember, this is a report of the president of the above-mentioned Reich Department for Water, Land, and Air Hygiene in Berlin on the question of rendering drinking water non-toxic, and it was not known to me that any testing of this was carried out in concentration camps.
I am not mentioned in this document nor did I have anything to do with that matter.
Q. Was it here in the trial that you saw that document for the first time, or had you known of it before?
A. I saw it for the first tine here.
Q. Professor Brandt testified on the stand that you had delivered a lecture at the meeting of the Commission for Drinking Water Installations Could you say something about that?
A. I spoke once there, but that was not really a lecture. The originator of this process wanted to introduce his process as a monoply and I stated my point of view about this and said that it was dangerous in times of air warfare to rely on only one process; on the contrary, several procedures for the same purpose should be developed, to one of which, of course, one could give precedence, but one should not rely on just one. That's all I said.
Q. Now I come to the experiments with epidemic jaundice with which you are also charged. Did you participate in any way in experiments in epidemic jaundice?
A. No.
Q. When did you first hear of these experiments?
A. When the indictment was presented to me.
Q. Did you know Dr. Dohmen?
A. No.
Q. Did you know Professor Haagen in Strassbourg?
A. I knew him slightly.
Q. Did you yourself collect any data on hepatitis, that is, epidemic jaundice?
A. The persons affected with hepatitis were, next to typhus and malaria, the greatest concern to German physicians during this war. Dr. Gutzeit has already said that the number of persons who fell ill of this disease rose into the millions. It is a matter of course that I as a doctor should have had to concern myself with this problem because every clinic with a hospital for epidemic cases received hundreds of such cases.
In other words, I concerned myself clinically with the treatment of this disease, and I calculated on the basis of statistical data that there were few cases but sufficient that fell to me. There were roughly a thousand but I did not concern myself with the germ that causes this disease, nor was there any equipment in my institute for breeding that virus. You need special technical equipment for that which we did not have.
Q. Did you concern yourself with how the sickness arises?
A. No.
Q. Professor Gutzeit in his interrogation as a witness on the 10th of February 1947 said that he had seen you occasionally at conferences and so knew you. Did you ever talk about jaundice experiments when you met him there?
A. No, not a word.
DR. FLEMMING: Mr. President, I now submit Document Mrugowsky 6.
MR. HARDY: May it please Your Honor, this Document Number 6 of Professor Gutzeit's on page 47 in Mrugowsky's document book is dated 23 January 1947, and since that time Gutzeit has appeared here as a witness and was examined by defense counsel. I think it will only be cluttering the record to admit this into evidence. Therefore, I object to the admission of this document.
THE PRESIDENT: Does counsel desire to read the document into the record or simply submit it as an exhibit?
DR. FLEMMING: I simply wanted to put it in evidence. I asked Gutzeit when he was on the stand at that time whether what he had said here in this affidavit was true, so I simply bring the Bench's attention to the document.
THE PRESIDENT: The document will be admitted in evidence.
DR. FLEMMING: It will be Mrugowsky Exhibit Number 15.
Q. The co-defendant Rudolf Brandt said in his affidavit, Document 371, Exhibit Number 186, that Dr. Grawitz had direct negotiations with Himmler in order to get experimental subjects for Dr. Dohmen.
Did Dr. Grawitz talk about this to you?
A. No, no one spoke to me about the jaundice problem.
Q. Then I can state that you neither participated in jaundice experiments nor before your arrest did you know anything about them?
A. That is correct.
Q. I come now to the sterilization experiments. Before your imprisonment did you know anything of experimentation in sterilization?
A. No, I had heard nothing about it.
Q. You know Rudolf Brandt's affidavit, Document 440, Prosecution Exhibit Number 141, in Document Bock 6, in which it is said that Himmler after a conference about sterilization problems specifically ordered that the whole sterilization question should be treated with the utmost secrecy. Were you ever present at conferences on sterilization?
A. No, never.
Q. Did you know Professor Klauberg?
A. No.
Q. Professor Hohlfelder?
A. I saw him once in Grawit's anteroom but did not speak to him.
DR. FLEMMING: Mr. President, from Susanne Dumont's affidavit, which is on page 48 and which formerly was Exhibit Number 13, I should like to read Numbers 18 and 19 on page 56:
"Number 18. I was also asked whether I had ever heard in the Institute or from Mrugowsky anything about:
(a) Luftwaffe high altitude experiments at Dachau carried out by Dr. Rascher, (b) Luftwaffe freezing experiments at Dachau carried out by Dr. Rascher, (c) Professor Schillings malaria experiments at Dachau, (d) Hepatitis experiments at Natzweiler and Sachsenhausen, (e) Typhus experiments at Natzweiler, (f) Sterilization experiments, (g) Luftwaffe experiments at Dachau on rendering sea water potable.
"I have definitely never heard anything about experiments of this kind. If such experiments had been discussed verbally or in writing in the Institute, then I an convinced I should have heard about them.
"Regarding the Luftwaffe experiments on rendering sea water notable, I should like to add that the question of water supply and drainage in concentration camps and their outlying posts was dealt with in the Institute, but it was purely a matter of water supplied from underground sources, never of sea water."
Q. So I can you state that you knew nothing about sea water experiments nor about sterilization experiments?
A. That is true.
Q. I cone now to the typhus experiments. Please describe to the Court what typhus really is.
A Typhus is a disease which is not normally an epidemic within the German Reich. In Europe there is a considerable source of this epidemic, with the center point in White Ruthenia in Russia, and this area in which the typhus epidemic is extends about the middle of Poland. There were only a few isolated cases of typhus in normal years before the war in Germany. The isolated cases of typhus in normal years before the war in Germany. The German doctors, in other words, had no knowledge of this epidemic, or this disease. It is known that this typhus always appears in large groups of people that are impoverished, and that the presence, therefore, of typhus is a specific wartime epidemic, and always appears when famines occur, or when the population is, as said, impoverished, and it was first known by the name of "Hunger Typhus."
Presenting those fields or areas in which the German troops were operating at the beginning of the Eastern campaign, typhus played a great row, and also it played a great row when Napoleon invaded Russia, because this campaign collapsed because of typhus and not because of cold weather. In order to do away with this epidemic since 1900, in other words, almost half a century, there has been in Germany sharp measures to combat it. For the whole field of contageous diseases we have divided Germany into two groups. The larger part we characterize as contageous diseases, whereas, a few diseases which usually do not occur in Germany but are brought from outside, and are consequently bringing fear are characterized as commonly danger us diseases, and are regulated by a special law, Of all these six epidemics, typhus is one.
DR. FLEMMING: In this matter I would like to submit Mrugowsky's Document No. 21, which is Document Book No. 1-A, not yet presented to the Court, on page 153. I do not know whether I should already new identify it, or to wait to give it a number when I put the document in evidence. I think it would be better if I did so now, for the sake of a better sequence.
THE PRESIDENT: Unless you find it necessary to read some portion of the document now, I should suggest you wait until the document is offered in evidence.
DR. FLEMMING: No, I don't want to read anything new, but simply call the Court's attention to it.
THE. PRESIDENT: Then you may wait until the document is read in, and then offer it in evidence at that time.
DR. FLEMMING: Thank you.
BY DR. FLEMMING:
Q Is typhus painful?
A Clinically, typhus results from a group of typhus diseases, as the word "typhus" means, fog, and has reference to numbness. In reference to the disease, it is characteristic of these various symptoms, or, at least, typhus takes place while this patient is in this stupor, or numbness. Typhus in general does not cause pain, an that is characteristic of all of this group of diseases, which can be diagnosed usually by the fact that the man has fever, and feels poorly but otherwise cannot say that he hurts anywhere, or cannot really say what is really wrong with him. That it is a rule that in such cases you diagnose typhus and spotted fever.
DR. FLEMMING: At this point I shall submit Mrugowsky's Document No. 19, which is also in Document Book No. 1-A, which I wish to introduce when that document book is available. Witness, can you state under oath -no, leave that out which refers to the document.
BY DR. FLEMMING:
Q Witness, what was the reason why typhus occasionally appeared in Germany with almost medieval violence?
A It is an old common saying on the part of epidemics, that those epidemics that are especially harmless, like mumps, or measles, scarletina, become very dangerous if they strike a receptive population which is not wed to them. If such an epidemic occurs, then in the first fury after it arises the most serious cases occur, and so it occurred as a result of the Russian campaign where I for the first time saw these most dangerous cases of typhus. There were cases of men who went to work in the morning, and then fainted, and became unconscious while working, were brought unconscious to the doctor, and died within one or two days without recovering consciousness.
Similar cases were found in Naples by the American Typhus Commission under General Fox. People died there in the streets. And that is typical of the first appearance of an alien epidemic in a population that is receptive to it, and, of course, that is the most serious danger in which a threatened population could find itself.
Q Was combatting of typhus under these conditions of greatest importance both from a medical and military reason, so far as a civilian population was concerned?
A Epidemics draw no distinction between civilian and soldiers, consequently, it is obvious that the control of one of the oldest epidemics of the world was one of our prime tasks, as soon as such an epidemic made its appearance.
DR. FLEMMING: Mr. President, I should like to ask a few questions of Dr. Ding, but first I should like to point cut a mistake in the interpretation, which was just called to my attention. The witness said when referring to the penal sentence in bringing out a statement that, "A criminal is not allowed to be a member of the army," and the interpretation was that "A person not fit for military service is either a worker or is put in prison." That, of course is a non-sensical mis-interpretation, and I should like it set down in the record that Mrugowsky said, "That every German in a prison alone with a criminal record cannot be inducted into the army."
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel, before entering upon that subject which you referred to a moment ago, that will be postponed for tomorrow morning's session. The Tribunal now will recess until 9:30 tomorrow morning.
(The Tribunal adjourns until 27 March 1947 at 0930 hours.)
Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal I in the matter of the United States of America, against Karl Brandt, et al, defendants, sitting at Nurnberg, Germany, on 27 March 1947, 0930, Justice Beals presiding.
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the court room will please find their seats.
The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal I.
Military Tribunal I is now in session. God save the United States of America and this Honorable Tribunal.
There will be order in the courtroom.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Marshal, you ascertain that the defendants are all present in court.
THE PRESIDENT: May it please your Honor, all defendants are present in the court.
THE PRESIDENT: The Secretary-General will note for the record the presence of all the defendants in court.
Counsel may proceed.
JOACHIM MRUGOWSKY - Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued) BY DR. FLEMMING (Counsel for the Defendant Mrugowsky):
Q. Before I enter upon a discussion of the typhus experiments in Buchenwald I should like to ask a few questions about Dr. Ding. Dr. Ding came from your institute, did he not?
A. Yes, I knew him as a result of an inquiry I directed to troop doctors of the Waffen-SS and he volunteered for work in the field of hygiene and bacteriology. He was an instructor in the SS-doctor's Academy in Graz, and at the Hygiene Institute of the university there he received his first bacteriological training. When he began in my institute he had already received his basic training and could developed himself further under me.
Q. Did you know him personally very well?
A. Of course, I saw him and spoke to him very often on technical specialized matters but it would be false for me to say that I knew him well or was in his close confidence.
That was not the case. I didn't like his nature on the whole.
Q. What was your impression of his character?
A. Various witnesses of the prosecution have already made statements on this point. For instance, Dr. Kogon said that one could easily be deceived as to the doctor; when he was still a concentration camp doctor in Buchenwald his former secretary could corroborate that in a book that he wrote before the war in Buchenwald. I myself say Ding was a person in whom one could rely and in whom one could have confidence. But through Kogon's testimony and through careful study of the material presented by the prosecution in this proceeding I have had to come to the conclusion that this assumption on my part was not correct. Kogon for instance said that even the most secret letters, which according to regulations had to be written by an officer himself, had been turned over to him as an inmate with the order that he should make a few typographical errors so that it could be pretended as if he himself had made the letter. The unreliability of character that was manifested in this small trait is probably characteristic of his whole character. But, of course, at the time I knew nothing of it. Otherwise the given characteristics that Kogon stated are correct. Ding was intelligent, industrious, with pathologically ambition, very vain, who liked to take credit for what others had done. Be liked to mention his association with people in high offices on every occasion, whether it was a suitable one or not.
Q. We have already said what Ding's specialized bacteriological training was. I would like to ask now what were his other qualifications as a doctor?
A. He had an average medical training. His knowledge of therapy and diagnostics were average. He was very skilful in the laboratory and could handle scientific problems.
Q. What was his additional training in the field of typhus?
A. When the thought arose in our institute of manufacturing our own typhus vaccine for own use, I sent him to Professor Gildemeister in the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin in order to acquaint himself with the who e field of typhus bacteria and to have him learn how these bacillae are bred in chicken eggs.
Subsequently, he was at the Pasteur Institute to learn more about how this vaccine is produced, a method which we wanted to use for our own purposes.
Q. Do you consider this additional training as sufficient?
A. This training was, of course, not sufficient to be a fully trained specialist. That can only be achieved by years of experience, but it certainly was sufficient to form a basis for acquiring one's own experience in the field. His practical activity corresponded to this training, and he was not thought of as to be employed in any special research work at first. He was given several fully trained bacteriologists who were prisoners to help him, one of whom was one of the best specialists in Poland in the field of typhus, Professor Fleck from Lemberg, who was to support him in his work. In this teaming up before his training was altogether sufficient.
Q. I ask you now to describe to the court how these typhus experiments in Buchenwald came about. What were the possibilities of controlling typhus at the end of 1941?
A. After the end of the first world war typhus control was made entirely dependent upon delousing. A person with typhus who has no lice on him cannot pass the disease on. The louse is the necessary perquisite for passing typhus from one person to another. If I can destroy the path of contagion by destroying the carrier, namely, the louse, then I must have success in controlling typhus. In the first world war this control method was sufficient. At the beginning off the Russian campaign in this second world war, however, typhus appeared at the *** among the civil population and in some of our camps, and it appeared with such elementary virulence that this delousing method was no longer adequate. This was the first great disappointment in the medical field. Vaccination for typhus was only theoretically known in Germany at that time. We had no experience of our own to any extent.
Q. Where enough vaccines on hand?
A. No, the only place where they could be produced was a special research and manufacturing institute of the Army in Krakow which was set up there after the Polish campaign. There a special typhus vaccine was produced which was made from the viscera of infected lice. This process is extremely difficult because every louse had to be infected personally with a compressed air needle and to vaccinate one person you had to make use of the viscera of 120 lice. The capacity of this institute was not even sufficient to cover the needs of the Army. Industry, on the other hand, or rather the development of this vaccine by industry as only in the beginning stages of laboratory research.
Here two main methods were known, the method just described, in which lice were used, was not employed, but the germs were bred in chicken eggs, and here there were two German methods which will play a role later on in the trial, the Otto Wehlrat and the GildemeisterHaagen methods. Greater production of these vaccines was hoped for by industry through these methods. In foreign countries there was still another method which involved the artificial infection of guinea pigs, rabbits, mice, or dogs in the nose, which induced a specific infection of the lungs and the infected lung of the animal was used for the vaccine. To this group of vaccines developed by this method which will play a role later in this testimony, belong also the French method of Gireud, the Roumanian method of Compiesch and Zuta, and a few others.
Q. That was the method which industry used in Germany
A. The method with chicken eggs.
Q. Why did you not leave the production of this vaccine up to industry?
A. Industrial production had not reached sufficient proportions at that time. On the other hand there was a prodigious need of typhus vaccines by every one and it could be seen that in the next few months that need could not be covered by industry alone. We ourselves had, for the troops and for the concentration camps a great requirement also. Consequently, it was clear from the very beginning that industry could not cover this need and I was at that time of the opinion which I still hold today, that the only solution for these difficulties was our won manufacturing of these vaccines for our own purpose. We did not choose the chicken egg method in Germany because the food situation there was becoming worse from MARCH 27-M-2-3-HD-Cook-Brown.
from month to month and because we knew that in the use of this method we had to count on a loss of fifty to eighty per-cent of the eggs used which could not be used in the manufacturing of vaccine. Consequently, I suggested that Grawitz use the French Giroud method, and Grawitz was agreed to this.
Q. Why were other vaccines tested other than those made from rabbits lungs, if it had been decided from the beginning to manufacture own vaccines from rabbit lungs?
A. In Germany we knew at that tine from our own experience only of the Weigle vaccine from lice. We knew nothing of the effectiveness of the vaccine from chicken eggs. We hoped the vaccine would be efficacious but we did not know then, and it is, of course, comprehensible that in a fight to control typhus epidemics we should be most reluctant to rely on unknown weapons. That is to say, at the beginning we simply had to make use of industrial production, hence the necessity of knowing how effective these vaccines were.
Q. How was this testing to be carried out?
A. This testing was first to be carried out by animal experiments, such as were customary in industry, and in other institutes, and secondly these really untested vaccines were to be used among a population infected with typhus and it was our idea to vaccinate Germans who came from an area free of infection and who were going into the East where typhus was rampant, with this vaccine, and then to keep an eye on these people and compare the relative efficiency of this vaccine and other vaccines in protecting them from catching typhus.
Q. Why was that not done?
A. It was in part done, but another line of development caught up with and passed it. I myself suggested this method of comparative investigation of epidemics to Grawitz. It was submitted to the Eastern Ministry, which dealt with Occupied Russian Territory. At the end of 1941 there was another conference with Grawitz, He asked me at that time how long it would take before we knew how effective these vaccines were and I answered him that it wbuld take a few months, but that one could not count on any certain knowledge before the end of the next year 1942/43, so he asked me if there were no other ways that night possibly shorten this length of time. I answered that the animal experiments and the testing in endangered groups of population took suck a length of time that the process could not be shortened without endangering the likelihood of any success at all.
A. (continued) Grawitz was most discontent to hear this. He had again been asked by Himmler when some positive results would be coming in. And Grawitz was a fellow who did not like to give any negative answer to his boss. Thus the bad relations between him and Himmler played a roll in this matter. The conversations became more and more excited because Grawitz finally got to the point of saying that a way simply had to be found to shorten the period of testing because it was quite impossible for him to give such a negative report to Himmler and finally he asked me whether the following way might not be feasible. It would decidedly shorten the length of time if these experiments were not carried out on animals but on human beings. Thus these human beings were first to be vaccinated and subsequently artificially infected. This thought, which came to me for the first time, outraged me. I told him that, of course, this procedure would shorten the length of time necessary because the discrepancy between animal and human being experiments is that the animal experiments must be repeated several times in order for the results of the experiment to be transferable to human beings, for as everyone knows a guinea pig is not a human being and in the very decisive points it reacts much differently from the way a human being reacts. Grawitz said, "What do you want? That is the only way that we can consider now. We are confronted by a dire necessity and I believe we must follow this if we see a chance to do so." I answered him that he should not understand my statement to mean that, because that way was impossible, namely, to artificially infect healthy human beings simply to test a vaccine because the same results could, although somewhat more slowly, be achieved by other means. He said, "Then you do admit that we must simply passively accept this loss of time and also accept the responsibility for the deaths that will result as a consequence of this time we are losing among the population infected with typhus?" I told him that was something which those people would have to take as their fate; I myself could see no other way. And I told him my attitude - that human life was sacred - an attitude which I had set down a few years previously in a book and that, of course, I could and would not act contrary to my own convictions and beliefs.