A. Division 15 was not even technically under my competency; that can be seen from exhibit 45 which has so frequently been mentioned, the minutes of the meetings of the Division Chiefs. When I first found out that there was such a Division 15, I asked Thierack what that was, and he told me the problem was that the Qualifications among the prisoners should be utilized reasonably in armament industries, add for that purpose Division 15 about a year and a Quarter ago had been established. That Division had finished its work and was now liquidating. During the entire period of my activities as Under-Secretary, I , no report was made to me about matters of Division 15, not even about matters of its liquidation.
Q. Although you have given us this explanation, I still have to go briefly through the documents which the Prosecution has submitted against you in this connection. I only want to quote the documents as exhibits: exhibit 39, 143,263 to 269, 271 to 277; these documents are concerned with Division 15. Can you please tell us whether you are to be brought in any connection , that is, concerning your period of office, as Under-Secretary?
A. No, I am in no connection to these documents. All of them, except those that are affidavits, bear dates which are before the period before my activities as Under-Secretary. I have never seen them. When I came into office these problems had been solved for over a year. That also applies to the transfer of Poles, Jews, and Gypsies; that these groups were dealt with in Department V,I found out here from the witness Hecker when he was in the witness box. It can be seen, in fact , from exhibit 268, that these matters were concluded in 1943.
Q. Did you by way of conversation obtain any information about matters of Division 15, even though officially nothing was submitted to you?
A. No, only that penal prisoners for the purpose of working in the armament industries had been turned over the police and that that action was concluded.
Q. Did you have an opportunity to discuss these matters with Engert?
A. I never discussed these matters, as Under-Secretary , with Engert.
Q. Exhibit 271, that is NG 557, document book IV-B, bears a date before your time in office. If we look closely at this exhibit, however, we find that several inmates at that time, when you were undersecretary, were transferred from prison into a concentration camp. Is it possible that on the basis of that situation, you may have obtained knowledge of these individual cases?
A. Exhibit 271 is a copy of the prison book register in Ebra. I went through that prison register in the same manner as I did through the list of death sentences, and I found out that the prisoners under numbers 113, 119, and 413 on 22 March and on 29 March 1944 -- that is, during the time when I was already UnderSeSecretary -- were tuned over to the police, and that, to the criminal police. In all cases, however, instruction was given before the time I assumed the office as Under-Secretary. The date of the directive from the Reich Ministry of Justice and the case of 113, is 4 May 1943, in the case of 119 also 4 May 1943; and in the case of 413 , it is even 22 October 1942. That case, in my opinion, is not connected with that action at all because the Division giving the instruction is neither Division V nor Division XV, but it is Division IV-A.
JUDGE BRAND: Just a minute ... We will take our morning recess of fifteen minutes.
(A recess was taken. )
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the court room will please find their seats.
The Tribunal is again in session.
BY DR. SCHILF:
Q May it please the Tribunal, before I continue the examination of the witness I, would like to make a statement. My colleagues have requested me to say the following on behalf of the defendants:
Yesterday instructions were issued in the prison that the defendants will no longer be allowed to be in single confinement but that two defendants will be put together in one cell. The defendants believe that this puts difficulties in the way of their defense. They are now very much occupied with preparation of their defense and it would hamper matters seriously if two defendants would be put in one small cell, the more so since several defendants have typewriters and work on them. Now during the time the Court is in session the defendants only have the opportunity to prepare their defense during tho evening. They have to work during the evening in their cells by light and the quarters arc so close that only one can work at a time. The defendants, therefore, request through me that if the Tribunal can exert any influence in postponing this measure for some time for tho defendants of case No. 3, that is, for these defendants, they would appreciate it if the Tribunal would do so. This has fulfilled the task which my colleagues have asked me to undertake in this regard.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will give consideration to your request, first as to whether we have any jurisdiction over the matter, and, second, if we have jurisdiction, as to what should be done.
DR. SCHILF: Thank you very much, Your Honor.
BY DR. SCHILF:
Q Witness, we now continue with the discussion about division 15 of the Ministry. You spoke about the prisoner register in Ebrach. If you have anything to add, please do so now.
A One short remark: This interim between the order issued by the Ministry and the actual transfer of the prisoner is to be explained as follows: The prisons did not have to undertake the transfer immediately if the prisoner concerned were indispensable for the prison. This can be seen from Exhibit 264; as well as from Exhibit 269.
Q You were present when a witness here testified that he experienced that prisoners were killed after they wore transferred to a concentration camp. Please tell the Tribunal whether you heard anything about that at the time.
A I have already made a statement in regard to this question, when I spoke about my general knowledge about concentration camps. My professional position did not afford me an opportunity to know any more. I remember only one conversation which I had with Thierack. In February, 1944, Thierack had been in Linz for the introduction of the new president of the District Court of Appeals. When he returned he told me that for about an hour ho had inspected the concentration camp Mauthausen. He added that he had an especially favorable impression, especially that the people received good food because they were good, skilled workers. He added with some bitterness, "One can see again in this instance how much more Himmler has at his disposal than the administration of justice."
Q Did you believe what Thierack told you at the time?
A Yes, I believed it. However, I did know that abuses had occurred in the concentration camps. I myself experienced that in the Hohenstein case, but I did not know that the abuses were so terrible as we found out after the collapse in general. It was even as follows: In January or February of 1945, the President of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Bernadette, called on Thierack through the mediation of the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish prisoners through the Swedish Red Cross. Ho had already negotiated with Himmler in regard to concentration camp inmates of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish nationality.
Himmler had agreed to put these foreign concentration camp inmates together in Neuengamme in one camp so that it would be easier to look after them. Then Count Bernadette came to Thierack and asked that Norwegian, Danish and Swedish inmates, to the extent that they were people who were prisoners in institutions of the administration of justice should be handed over to Himmler so that they too would be sent to Neuengamme concentration camp. For mo that was an additional reason that this Neuengamme concentration camp must be all right.
Q The Prosecution has introduced Exhibit 412 to Exhibit 414 against all defendants. These are files in which the concentration camps were listed and official reports about the conditions which existed there when the Allied troops entered the concentration camps for the first time. Herr Klemm, in view of the decision that the Court made this morning that conspiracy is no longer to be considered an independent count in the indictment, can you state briefly in a few words that you can say about your knowledge in regard to Exhibits 412 to 414?
A: I do not want to repeat what I have already stated in regard to ay knowledge about the occurrences in concentration camps. I only want to make a supplementary remark. This trial here took place in another court room for a short period and in that court room there was a map on which nineteen concentration camps were marked. I looked at these names very carefully and found out that until the time of the collapse I did not even know the names of fourteen of those nineteen concentration camps. I know that the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald existed. That I know before 1939. That there was a Nouengamme concentration camp I found out due to the intervention on the part of Count Bernadette. About the existence of the Mauthausen concentration camp I found out in February 1944 through what Thierack told me. That I found out in the beginning of February 1945 when the question of transferring senates of the People's Court to Bayreuth came up. That was represented as being particularly favorable because the police could lodge their prisoners in the Flessenbuerg camp which was in the prosimity. I did not knew anything more.
Q: With that we can leave this field. We now come to the next charge of the indictment. You are personally made responsible in the Indictment for having assisted in the so-called lynch justice on the part of the German population exorcised on baled-out Allied flyers during the war. May it please the Tribunal, the documents which were introduced against the witness in that connection arc Exhibit 108, that is NG 304 in Document Book 1-E, Exhibit 109, that is Document 635-PS in the same document book I-E, Exhibit 110, that is NG 149, also in Document Book I-E. According to Exhibit 108, we already discussed it a few days ago - Bormann had sent a secret letter from the Fuehrer Headquarters to the Nazi Party which was addressed to Gau and Kreisleiters, he spoke about lynch actions which had already been taken by the people and it says further, and I quote, no police measures of prosecution of the people who participated in this were instituted, that is, he is speaking in the past tense.
Exhibit 109 shows correspondence between Lammers and Thierack. Lammers informs Thierack about this circular letter sent out by Bormann. First, I want to ask you, in what relationship did you see these statements of Bormann to the Kreisleiters and banleiters to Thierack at the time?
A: According to the text of Lammers' letter, Exhibit 109, there must have been an enclosure in this letter.
Q: At the time did you obtain knowledge of Exhibit 109 and the enclosure, as you call it, Exhibit 108?
A: Yes, I saw Lammers' letter and I must have seen this circular letter of Bormann's together with it.
Q: Bormann spoke about three of those cases which had occurred in the past. Bormann stated that penal prosecution did not take place. When you saw these two letters -- when those Exhibits 108 and 109 were submitted to you, did you know anything about it, that is that in the past the Administration of Justice, that is the Court, abstained from penal prosecution against members of the German population.
A: I consider that that is absolutely impossible. If penal prosecution would have been abstained from, this could have bean done only by quashing the trial and for such a quashing Hitler was competent exclusively or the Minister of Justice to the extent to which this right had been delegated to him by Hitler.
This can be seen from the clemency regulations which have already been introduced as a document here, in part. I cannot remember such a case was discussed and I cannot find anything in these reports about it either. I looked at them with that in mind.
Q: If you say that at the time when you received this letter you did not know any past cases, how should one this understand Bormann's letter? He is speaking of the past and says that penal prosecutions did not take place.
A: This can only be explained as follows: According to the letter, before it was sent out, such cases must have occurred. Himmler had already in 1943 instructed his police not to interfere in disputes between the German population and Terror Flyers which had been shot down. This was already brought out in the IMT trial. This sentence which Bormann used in his circular letter can be explained in my opinion only as follows, namely: that the police did not forward denunciations to the Administration of Justice and that in this way a penal prosecution did not take place, but only because the Administration of Justice did not hear anything about those matters. From the hint that Lammers gives in this letter that Himmler had already informed his police alsl on the basis of Borman's circular letter it is quite clear to me that such denunciations to the Administration of Justice were also not to be made in the future. But, of course it could happen that the Administration of Justice found out about such cases on its own and took them up, but incidentally that Hitler backed this action himself is in my opinion shown in Exhibit 110.
Q: Herr Klemm, Exhibit 108 and 109 bear your initials. I now want to ask you were these statements submitted to you before they were submitted to Thierack or after that?
A: I received these documents after Thierack had seen them and after he had already made his nutation on them.
Q: This notation by Thierack reads as follows: "IV RV with the addition that such cases for the purpose of examination in regard to quashing shall be submitted to me" that is "to me," Thierack, that is Thierack's notation. What do you have to say about that? How did you understand that notation?
A: The prosecution submitted this document with a supplementary sheet and this says, at least in the German edition of the document, handwritten note on the right upper corner, signed "Klemm". That is not right. There isn't any handwritten notice in the upper right hand corner at all but merely a K.L. my initials. Below the initials that is about the upper one third of the page, there is the notation which has just been quoted we which was written by Thierack. The hand-written note is without doubt in Thierack's hand--writing. If the original were available and not merely a photostat, one would be able to see that this note was written with a green pencil. That was the color in which Ministers had to sign, according to the business regulations for the highest Reich authorities. Whereas in a purple pencil only my initials are on this document.
Every one of the defendants here, if he has been in the Ministry, would be able to testify whether that was my handwriting or not.
THE PRESIDENT: What is the exhibit number on that again?
DR. SCHILF: Exhibit 109, Your Honor. 109; 653 PS. But may I remark it is a later sheet. The Prosecution submitted Exhibit 109 at two different times in two parts.
BY DR. SCHILF:
Q Now, HerrKlemm, I want to ask you -
A I want to make an additional explanation. The figure "4" means Department 4. "R-V" means "Rundverfuegung", circular order, with the addition that such cases are to be submitted to me, that,is, Thierack, and are to be submitted not for quashing but for the purpose of examining the question of quashing if they wore pending. Thus a quashing was not considered from the very beginning.
Q Did this instruction issued by Thierack have any possibility of inciting the population to lynch allied fliers, or how did you look at it at the time?
AAfter the Minister had issued this instruction to Division 4 and thus had arrogated the decision in regard to this to himself, I no longer had a possibility to undertake anything in the matter. This circular order was issued with the stamp "secret" on it if it was sent out at all, and I don't know that. And one cannot talk about inciting the population for the reason that the population did not hoar about it at all. However, after Bormann had informed the Party in this manner and after Himmler had issued his instructions to the police, it was the duty of Thierack to take some measures in regard to the prosecutions in the country. I have already stated that the Administration of Justice was unwilling and Thierack was unwilling, too, to grant freedom from prosecution without any conditions like that. Thus if the Administration of Justice wanted to carry out a trial, the Minister had to assert his authority and to protect the local prosecutors against any elements of the Party or the police who would like to prevent such a penal prosecution.
If a proceeding was to be quashed, however, only the minister himself could do that, because of the regulations by law. What were the consequences of this circular order in the Administration of Justice, I can no longer remember. It may be one or two very special cases were quashed. I do not know whether there were more such cases.
Q You said that the Administration of Justice and Thierack, too, turned against Borman's methods. Can you cite examples for this?
A The Party did not only require that those people should not be punished who participated in lynchings but, on the contrary, it wanted to have severely punished those people who treated fliers who had been shot down in a humane manner; and they wanted to have them punished with the aid cf the regulations regarding the forbidden contact with prisoners of war. We did not concur with either of those measures. In a case which took place in Magdeburg, the Party attempted to achieve the most severe punishment of a couple which had given feud to an enemy flier who had been shot down and who had received a piece of candy from him. This was stopped. We had received a report according to which a couple was arrested because they had allowed an Allied flier who had been shot down into their apartment. The Canadian -I believe he was a Canadian flier -- had been taken prisoner during the air raid, that is, before the all-clear signal, by a civilian, and the civilian took him into his apartment. In this apartment the flier received something to drink and the Canadian offered the wife a piece of candy. At first the woman refused it. When he offered it the second time, however, she accepted it. She then put the piece of candy away and said, "That is for the children."The Party had achieved it with the local Administration of Justice that the married couple was arrested and that an indictment would be filed for illicit contact with prisoners of war in a very serious case. When I heard about this report -- I shall shorten this description somewhat -- I reported this case very emphatically to Dr. Thierack, and during the very same night he called up the chief public prosecutor in Magdeburg and instructed him to have the married couple released immediately the next morning.
Q Herr Klemm, that is sufficient. I shall submit an affidavit about this incident. I only want to ask you now, those were cases in which Germans were prosecuted because they were supposed to have treated Allied prisoners of war too leniently. Can you also cite the opposite cases where the Reich Administration of Justice prosecuted Germans who participated in lynchings?
AAround the turn of the year 1944-1945 in Krannenburg, that is the district of the District Court of Appeals, Duesseldorf, the following case occurred. An SA leader had, during the course of the air war, lost three very close relatives of his due to bombing. One noon he passed the town hall in Kranenburg. There was a guard standing, and with him he had two captured paratroopers. This SA leader went over to him and shot the two captured paratroopers. We prosecuted that case and even though the police as well as the Party offices offered considerable resistance, these discussions were advanced energetically. I do not know the final outcome, because later on due to the events of the war this territory was occupied by the Allied troops.
DR. SCHILF: May it please the Tribunal, may I say briefly I have already the approval of the Court to submit these files of the General Public Prosecutor of Duesseldorf. I do not have them here as yet. When I receive them I shall then submit them in evidence.
BY DR. SCHILF:
Q HerrKlemm, briefly in regard to Exhibit 110, which you have already mentioned, terror-fliers, that is how it is called, secret military matter. Did you find out anything about that?
A These are Wehrmacht files and a correspondence with the Foreign Office, and the problem was to not lot terror fliers obtain the status of prisoners of war.
Q Let me interrupt you; you do not have to discuss it. Did you find about the matter at the time?
A The Administration of Justice neither took part in this case nor did we know anything about it.
Q The prosecution, furthermore, submitted Exhibit 417, that is document 1676-PS, in document Book 1-A. It is an article which appeared in the Voelkischer Beobachter on the 28th and 29th of May 1944. The prosecution asserts that from this article of Goebbels' in the German press, one can read an incitement of the population to administer lynch justice. Did you find out about this article at the time?
A I did not have knowledge of this article at the time. It was not the cause for Thierack's circular letter, which was issued for quite different reasons; as I just described, it was issued for legal considerations. Moreover, according to the affidavit in Exhibit 440, the issuance of this circular letter must have occured at a time which shows that it could have had no connection with this article in the newspaper.
Q With that we can conclude this chapter. Exhibit 440, which we mentioned, is NG-1306, and it is an document boo I Supplement.
Mr. Klemm, we shall now discuss the subject of Judges' Letters and also the so-called Guidance Letters, Lenkungsbriefe. You know that the prosecution submitted a very extensive amount of evidence in regard to this subject.
First I want to ask you about the Judge's Letters. In what manner did you participate in these Judges' Letters, Richterbriefe?
DR. SCHILF: For the information of the Tribunal, I would like to cite the documents that are concerned with this question. They are Exhibits 81 through 86, 90, and 94 to 96 inclusive. The NG numbersare given on the list which I have submitted. Since the documents do not have to be discussed individually, I believe it is sufficient to refer to exhibit number.
Q (Continuing) Please answer my question, Mr. Klemm A The Judges' Letters had already been issued for more than a year at the time when I became Undersecretary.
I cannot say anything about the history of their origin. My participation was limited to having a carbon copy of the finished Judges' Letters submitted to me in draft form. Thierack was given a copy at the same time. When looking it over, I had to start from the point of view of not only the selection of the cases which had to be treated and the subjects, but also of the fundamental opinion of Thierack, which had already been laid down by him in advance. Technical changes would have been of little avail, since Thierack looked at these drafts word for word and changed them considerably. He regarded the Judges' Letter as his own exclusive province.
Moreover, of the letters which the prosecution has submitted here, I myself participated only in the Judges' Letter, Exhibit, 86. All of the other letters date from the time prior to which I was Undersecretary.
Q The prosecution regards the judges' letters, from the point of view of their contents as well as their form, as an illegal pressure exercised on judges and jurisdiction at that time. It asserts that it was a serious intervention into the independence of judges. When you were concerned with the judges' letters, did you consider that effect? Did you fear it, or did you support it, or did you see those matters from a different point of view than the prosecution asserts here?
A I wish to say the following about that. The thought never occured to me that the impression could be created at all which the prosecution today raises as a charge. The sentences were incorporated into the judges' letters anonymously, that is to say, without stating the name of the court, without stating the name of the condemned person or even the name of the judge, or the time.
Through that it was intended to be emphasized, especially by this means, that the question of general interest, and that not the individual case was at stake, nor the praise or the blame of a judge. By the manner in which these matters were incorporated into the judges' letters, in particular, the judge could not feel himself being addressed directly, as usually occurs in legal journals, in which these sentences are published in the legal press with the full naming of the court, the file number and the date, and then there usually follows the discussions of the opinion.
That the judges' Letters were confidential was not due to the fact that they had to be afraid of showing themselves in public or that something that was incorrect was supposed to be covered up. The reason was rather the following; the truthful presentation of the case. And they were not hypothetical cases reported in the Judges' Letters, but those which had actually occured. Thus, I am saying that the truthful presentation of a case could not always keep the opinions anonymous, but it was intended to avoid and that was in favor of the person who was condemned, not again be exposed to the public. However, over and above that, the showing to the public of a broad, general criticism by one authority of the Administration of Justice of another was to be prevented.
The National Socialist press, in its total character, was exclusively hostile to the Administration of Justice, and the Administration of Justice in particular had to suffer the most unbelievable attacks in the Nazi press. The press would have jumped at these Judges' Letters in order to criticize the Administration of Justice, and would have said, "The offices of the Administration of Justice themselves state how wrong the attitude of the Administration of Justice is." Above all, however, it was intended to be avoided that the Judges' Letters would be interpreted in an entirely wrong direction -- that is, through the general public--in clemency pleas, that in a false lay comparison, by referring to Judges' Letters, a claim for a pardon would be raised.
In addition to that, the Judges' Letters were intended to be the basis for a friendly discussion between the highest authorities of the Administration of Justice and the individual judge. Judges and prosecutors were requested expressly -- by the judges'letters themselves, --to address requests in regard to the Judges' Letters directly to the Minister of Justice, and they were told that they were not forced to go through channels. Every judge and prosecutor was supposed to be a direct collaborator in these Judges' Letters, and in this direct way letters reached the Ministry of Justice.
Q. You stated that you participated only in the writing of one Judges' Letter in your capacity as Undersecretary,actually, and you cited Exhibit 86, which is NG-321, in Document Book I-D. All of document book I-D is concerned with Judges' Letters. Would you tell the Tribunal briefly to what extent you participated in this Judges' Letter, that is, the one of 1 March to 1 April 1944, No. 17?
A. I shall make a brief statement; otherwise I would just have to quote what is in the document. I only want to refer to individual passages, that is page 104 to 106, where a Special. Court had pronounced a death sentence. The nullity plea was made and an acquittal resulted. I refer especially to pages 139 to 141 and the criticism which was made there. Furthermore, I wish to refer to the case on pages 108 and 109, which was also a death sentence, the reopening of the case, and the result, which was three years in a penitentiary. The criticism in regard to this opinion is on page 141. The basic statements concerning plundering, on pages 134 and 139 are especially interesting, On page 8 in this Judges'Letter, it is stated that the death sentence was not necessary. Then, statements in regard to case 13 on page 147, there it is stated that neither the death sentence nor a term in a penitentiary were appropriate. In case No. 23 there are especially significant statements about plundering by foreigners among themselves.
Then there is case No. 24, and likewise cases 6, 7, 8 and 23, all of which discuss opinions in which the sentence which was pronounced against a foreigner was too high. Case No. 26, on page 155, contains statements about the rejection of the false application of analogy.
This judges' letter, in particular, demonstrates that the point was not to make jurisdiction more severe but to bring about a just jurisdiction.
Q. We can now interrupt the subject of the judges' letters. May I inform the Tribunal I intend to submit more evidence in my document book in regard to this subject. Now we come to two so-called guidance letters which bear your name. That is Exhibit 178, NG-676, in Document Book III-E, and are called Guidance letters, Exhibit 474, NG-627, in Document III-A Supplement Volume. These letters concern information issued by the Reich Minister of Justice which you signed as Thierack's deputy. Witness, the first went to the President of the District Court of Appeals in Stuttgart. That is Exhibit 178. The second one is to the President of the District Court of Appeals in Hanburg. That is Exhibit 474. The contents of these documents show that undermining of military strength was the subject. The sentences by these courts of Stuttgart and Hamburg were criticized as being too lenient by the Minister--that is, by you--because they were signed by you as deputy. Please describe to the Tribunal how these two letters came about.
A. Undermining of military strength was regarded as particularly dangerous. The reason for it was the experiences which Germany had made in 1918 when the German armies were far in enemy territory and through the failure at home, sufferable peace was prevented. Therefore undermining of military strength was already in 1939 introduced by law as a subject for penalty. Care was to be taken that the will for tenacity and the inner strength and hope and faith in a sufferable end of the war would be maintained. In view of the successes which the German Wehrmacht had the first years of this war and also during the middle of the war, we hardly heard anything about reverses at that time with the exception of Stalingrad. Thus this crime never occurred. Only toward the end of the war when the military situation got worse, the prosecution had be send the indictment and the opinion to the Ministry of Justice. These matters were handled in the Referat, the department of Franke, in order to get a uniform picture of the jurisdiction. It was also important to pay attention to the fact that the penalties were uniform in the different districts of the Reich.
If it happened that in individual cases there were considerable mis givings against the legal evaluation or the extent of the penalty, the files were submitted to the Oberreichsanwalt, the Chief Reich Prosecutor, for review as to whether a further means of legal recourse was necessary. The misgivings, however, referred not only to sentences that were too lenient, but also to sentences that were too severe. Only in the latter case it was simpler. One could help by means of a clemency plea. I here have to insert that neither the Minister now I, myself, saw the opinions in cases in regard to the undermining of military strength with the exception of those cases in which the execution of a death sentence which had been issued was pronounced or cases in which the Referent or department chief requested the introduction of a legal recourse. A longer observation of the sentences in the Referat, or department, could then show that a certain district deviated from the generally recognized principles in its sentences, especially from the principles recognized by the Reich Supreme Court.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Klemm, I think you fully explained the reasons why you desired to have uniformity. Now this particular exhibit indicates that in this particular instance you complained of sentences being too mild. You have explained the reasons which underlay your theory in the matter and I think you have covered it sufficiently. We must avoid such continuous repetition, Mr. Schilf.
DR. SCHILF: Herr Klemm, therefore let us go concretely to the contents of these two letters. How did it happen that these two letters as such were written? I believe it will be necessary to bore the Tribunal with that still because your name is under this letter.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel, you are not boring the Tribunal nor is the witness. But we have the substance before us at this moment of these letters and you need not ask the witness what the substance of those letters were. We are here to try the case fairly and we don't want counsel to worry about boring us, but we do want counsel to worry about undue explanations and too long explanations.