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Show Americans Help Liberated Europe Live Again 761 U. S. Army Signal Corps, Official In France an Army Crew Heaves In a Flexible Hose for Transfer of Fuel from Ship to Shore Two pipelines follow the Armies, one for trucks and tanks, the other for planes. By October, 1944, 800 miles of six-inch pipe had been laid toward the front from the Channel and the Mediterranean. When the Yanks crossed the Rhine in 1945, a pipeline went with them. It pumped fuel from Cherbourg. their property abroad is frozen, and all German Government and Nazi property at home and abroad is controlled. Mail is impounded, telephone, telegraph, and postal services are suspended, a system of censorship is established, radio broadcasting by Germans is terminated, travel across frontiers is prohibited, and movement out of towns and villages sharply curtailed. Among the Allied laws is one which sets up a series of crimes and offenses by individuals. The death penalty is provided under this law for Germans guilty of espionage, communication with the enemy, armed attack on our forces, wearing our uniform, harboring members of the German armed forces, rioting, or looting our supplies. Other acts which have been common through the ages among populations under military occupation are also proscribed. They range from disobedience of orders of the military authorities and counterfeiting our currency to "dissemination of rumors calculated to alarm or excite the people" and "conduct hostile or disrespectful to the Allied Forces." Legislation like this requires courts to enforce it. So, within hours after a city is occupied, military government courts are established for trial of civilians (page 762). These courts, following simple procedures, are firm, fast, and just. Trial by jury, habeas corpus, and certain other Anglo-Saxon privileges are dispensed with, but in general an enemy who comes before these courts has the same right to be furnished a copy of the charges, to be represented by an attorney, and to call witnesses on his own behalf as does a GI brought before a court-martial. One docket I saw showed that some 15 percent of the Germans tried were acquitted as "not guilty." The vast majority of the offenses so far committed by Germans concern circulation: |