We saw after the war how the death penalty was reintroduced. But even this was not enough. A law was passed allowing the inflicting of punishment for acts committed in the past when these acts were still legally permissible. Could a greater undermining of trust and confidence in legal justice be imagined? Who can feel safe here when what the authorities today declare legally permissible may in coming years be declared illegal with retrospective effect by the selfsame authorities? Can a more foolish, confusing and unjust legal administration of justice be manifested?
      According to this legal practice, citizens who have never wittingly committed any infringement of any legal injunction may nevertheless be suddenly declared to be offenders and thereby be enrolled in the ranks of "criminals" because the authorities have only now after the event got the idea that certain acts, which they had not forbidden, are in actual fact criminal and ought to have been forbidden.
      This gross delay in the setting up of the law can be attributed to nothing but a far too inadequate and sluggish mental activity and to inadequate powers of observation on the part of the legislating authorities. But this can easily be circumvented. One simply imprisons and punishes the citizens for breaking laws that the authorities at the given point in time, because of their inadequate intellectuality or delayed insight into the situations in question, had not yet even begun to realise the necessity of and had therefore not at all thought of making. But punishing people for breaking laws that do not exist can only be criminal. Laws that do not exist cannot possibly be broken. The authorities are thus punishing the citizens for breaking laws that these same authorities, because of inadequate intellectual qualifications at the time the "infringement" took place, had not yet made. If there is to be any question of punishment here it must be solely the legislative authorities that are liable to endure the death-trap or punishment-trap they have set up for the innocent citizen who in good faith did only what was legally permissible yet who may one day be stamped as a criminal and made liable to punishment.