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Show PROBABLY EXAGGERATED. There has been more or less complaint com-plaint regarding the treatment of prisoners pris-oners in the various countries now en gaged in war, ana, m ait proDauuu, some cause has been given. But investigation in-vestigation after the struggle is over will probably disclose the fact that conditions were not so very baa after all, certainly not so bad as they might have been considering the number of captives. "'Bring out "your dead," was the command heard the first thing every morning at Andersonville, as the creaking wagons backed up to the main entrance of one of the most horrible hor-rible prison pens imaginable. It is inconceivable in-conceivable that any prison camp in Europe is conducted upon that plan or that any prison commandant com-mandant will be executed for murder, which was the fate of th inhuman wretch who was responsible for the death of so many of the captive boys in blue. Andersonville originally comprised 16J2 acres with a stockade fifteen feet high. The area was soon increased to -6l2 acres, .and at times as many as 33,- 1 000 union prisoners were confined within with-in the inclosure. A smalL- stream ran through the pen and the ground was marshy. There was little food and no shelter for the unfortunate men, and 13,000 of them perished. Those who survived have often 'tried to tell of their great sufferings, only to discover that they could not express their feelings feel-ings in words. We do not believe any of the European prisoners of war are n.-i 3 ships, although if there is a shortage of food in the laud of their captivity, they will of course fare worse than ; would be the case otherwise. ; Another improvement which tends to j mitigate the horrors of war may be noted. Sanitation is much better understood un-derstood and more rigorously applied. There is less sickness and there are fewer deaths from natural causes in all the armies, and there will be less chance for pestilence pesti-lence after the war is over. The only experience of the kind so far during the struggle was the outbreak of typhus in Serbia,' which, although thousands of lives were lost, was finally stamped out by American physicians and nurses. Such an outbreak could not have occurred oc-curred in any of t he other belligerent countries, so perfect are the sanitary arrangements on the battle fronts, in the prison camps, the hospitals and the slums of the big cities. There never has been a war in which the old saying that "cleanliness is next to godliness" has been so thoroughly put to the test, and it is not necessary to state that there is not the least room to doubt the truth of the axiom. While the accounts of the terrific battles now in progress are heartrending, heartrend-ing, w lien we turn our thoughts Trom the glory of the achievements to the heaps of dead and the thousands of God's creatures lying torn and mangled man-gled upon the blood-soaked ground, we cannot believe that cruelties are practiced prac-ticed upon even the unwounded prisoners prison-ers in Great Britain, France or Germany, Ger-many, three of the most highly civilized civi-lized and cultured nations the world has ever known. It is perhaps natural that there should be charges and counter-charges and an effort made to arouse t he sympat hy of the neutrals, and it may be that the laws of humanity human-ity have been i ransgressed in isolated instances, but we do not hold the belligerent bel-ligerent government s responsible, and we do not believe the men at the head of affairs in the three countries mentioned, men-tioned, or in Jtaly, Kussia and Austria, would countenance such infractions of the law and thus prove the charge of barbarism. War is just exactly what General Sherman said it was, and the lot of the prisoner is not a happy one under any circumstances, but when the history of the present struggle is written writ-ten it is not at all probable there will be a chapter on the "Inhuman Treatment Treat-ment of Prisoners. ' ' |