Very Uncertain

"The ways of war are inscrutable ways," said Field Marshal Albert Kesselring at his surrender in 1945. When a British war crimes court sentenced him to death for the reprisal killings by German troops of 1,413 Italian civilians, Kesselring did not deny his responsibility (TIME, May 19). "If there is any guilt," he said stoutly, "it is mine and mine alone." To his defense came distinguished British soldiers. Said Lieut. General Sir Oliver Leese, who commanded the British forces opposite Kesselring : "He was a gallant soldier who fought well and squarely. If things had gone the other way, the man sentenced to death might have been me."

Last week, Lieut. General Sir John Harding, British commander in Italy, commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment. Cried Rome's newspaper Il Tempo: "General Oreste Bellomo [Italian commander of the Bari garrison during the war] was executed for having killed a British soldier. Human justice is very uncertain and frail."

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