The competition is not great, it is true. Hess, sitting in the num-
ber two spot, is really frightening to look at, the skin drawn drum-
tight around the skull bones, eyes under bushy black brows so
deepset they are indeterminate shadows at the distance of a few
feet. What goes on behind those eyes, no one knows. The claim
is, almost nothing. He is supposed to be suffering from amnesia
and in repose his face is that of a sleepwalker lifting himself from
the cabinet of Dr. Caligari. But there is a flicker of consciousness
somewhere within; occasionally he draws back his upper lip, show-
ing large even-spaced teeth, and you suddenly realize he is smiling.

Ribbentrop, sitting next to Hess, looks indeed a broken man.
Sparse gray hair crowns a thin face with sharp nose and small
chin. There is about him an air of fright and of immense weari-
ness; he walks as if he had been Hitler's foreign minister for a
thousand years.

Farther along in the front row are Funk and Streicher, both
short, chunky, and gross-featured, a pair of caricatures sprung
full-blown from Streicher's own Jew-baiting newspaper, Der
Stuermer. Schacht is in the first row, too; it is an honor he does
not seem to enjoy very much. There is something of the catfish
in the inverted U of his mouth and his goggly eyes. He wears an
air of complete aloofness; he cannot understand what has hap-
pened that he, ex-president of the great Reichsbank, intimate of
honored American and British and French figures in the banking
world, should now find himself in the dock with criminals.

The rest of the faces are hardly worth recalling. Meet Jodi,
Keitel, Doenitz, Rosenberg, Frank, Speer, Fritzsche under other
circumstances, and you might be meeting a salesman, a physician,
a lawyer, a real estate broker. Kaltenbrunner of the lantern jaw
and Sauckel of the Hitler mustache, stand out a little; I've seen
their type on "Wanted" posters in American post offices. But
truthfully I've also seen it behind delicatessen counters and the
small barred windows of a bank teller's cubicle.

"What makes this inquest significant," Jackson's quiet voice
goes on, "is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that
will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to
dust."

-4-