The political offense represents a controversial dimension of criminal law which encompasses as many degrees of chicanery, expediency, and misery as any aspect of human experience within the realm of the law.

Formosa (Taiwan) and the Pescadores (Penghu) were Chinese territory for several centuries before they were ceded to Japan by the Treaty of Shimonoseki of April 18, 1895.

Pursuant to agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States, endorsed by General Assembly resolution of December 20, 1961, representatives of the following countries took part in the Conference of the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament: Brazil, Bulgaria, Burma, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, India, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Rumania, Sweden, the Soviet Union, the United Arab Republic, the United Kingdom and the United States.

On April 23, 1954, the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ratified the Geneva Conventions of 1949 with reservations not here pertinent.

German and Swiss Cases. September 30, 1960.

4 St R 242/60. Juristenzeitung 1962, p. 28 et seq.

The accused, a former officer in the German Army, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor for participating in the shooting of Russian slave laborers at the end of March, 1945.