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Note à M. Myron Taylor,
Représentant du Président des ÉTATS-UNIS d’AMÉRIQUE*

12 décembre 1944

 

1. According to democratic principles, he who is in power governs by the will of the people, in the name of the people and for the good of the people.

2. In a democratic regime, he who governs can resign but he cannot cede his power to others.

3. Not even the parliament nor the senate can deem itself authorized to cede all rights and powers to a foreign authority. This would be beyond and contrary to the constitution, which in the individual states, regulates the exercise of powers within the state but does not contemplate the abdication of powers in favor of a foreign authority.

4. According to democratic doctrine, military authorities do not have the faculty to cede the civil power to a foreign Nation. The heads of the army, if compelled by military defeat, can find themselves obliged by necessity to sign an armistice or to make a peace which may have clauses restricting the exercise of the civil power. But this is an imposed acceptance, not free cession of civil powers. There remains to the victor always the moral obligation not to exceed the limits of human and civil justice.

5. In conclusion, according to democratic principles, the cession of all rights and powers to a foreign Nation could happen legitimately in only one way, that is, when the people themselves – either by means of a free referendum or by means of a constituent assembly freely elected – would manifest freely and consciously their will to arrive at such a complete cession in favor of a foreign authority. In this hypothesis, the people, who are the depositary of all rights and powers, would transfer them knowingly and willingly to others who were to be foreign to that same people.

* * *

1. The formula, «unconditional surrender».

a) Does not exclude the existence of conditions of surrender; these must already exist and indeed the victors must have them already prepared. b) It does exclude, however, that the loser know the conditions previous to surrender; hence it forces the loser to uncertainty and to a fear of more stringent and more ruinous measures. c) It presupposes that the loser, in surrendering, must accept – without discussing – all the individual conditions which the victor will impose, and this constitutes a hard and serious humiliation.

2. If, therefore, the loser is a people of great pride and obstinacy, the formula, «unconditional surrender», can urge him to fight with all his strength and up to the last moment in order to retard as much as possible such a humiliation and catastrophe.

3. The conditions which the victor has already prepared for the loser are either just or unjust. In the first case no reason is seen why they cannot be known beforehand; in the second case, it is not seen how they could be approved by the human conscience.


*Actes et Documents du Saint-Siège relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale, vol. 11 p.642-644.

 

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