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Show IRISH-AMERICANS PROTEST. Ask Administration to Take Action in Regard to Lord Roberts' Brutal Brut-al Treatment of American Prisoners Prison-ers in South Africa. The Executive Committee of the United Irish League of New York held a snecial meeting last week to discuss the deportation of Boer prisoners captured cap-tured by Lord Roberts, having learned that 233 of them, including twenty-two Irish-Americans, had been sent to the Island of Ceylon. The committee decided de-cided to send the following letter on the subject to President McKinley: "We respectfully ask your attention to the news from Colombo, Ceylon, that 233 prisoners of war, including twenty-two twenty-two American citizens, captured in South Africa by the British forces operating ope-rating against the Boers, have been sent to. and arrived at, Ceylon, whose climate is notoriously fatal to white men. "Such a course on the part of Great Britain is in violation of the laws of war which prescribe for prisoners of war such treatment while in the hands of the enemy, as will not menace their health nor restrict their liberty more than is necessary to restrain them t from again joining their own forces and resuming hostility to the captors, and is in most unfavorable contrast to the Christian kindliness and care extended by the Boers to those whom the fortune for-tune of war has placed within their hands. "Sending of such prisoners into distant dis-tant and inclement countries is expressly ex-pressly against t'he international law. The United States provided against it eariy in their history witness the treaty with Prussia in 1799, which definitely de-finitely stipulated by its twenty-fourth article that no prisoners of war, taken on either side, should be sent to the East Indies. This article was renewed by the treaty of 1828, and yet continues in force. "The distinguished treatment so ostentatiously os-tentatiously tendered by England to Americans, fighting on her behalf in the Boer war, tends to remind us that she .recognizes the right of American citizens to take sides in the contest. We are certainlv entitled to demand that those of them opposed to her shall receive, when caDtured, the treatment accorded by civilized powers. "We, therefore, respectfully request immediate action on the part of our government in the matter, and that the attention of the government of Great Britain be at once emphatically directed direct-ed ot the violation of law complained of, and. further, that it be called upon to promptly release and compensate the American , citizens so grossly outraged as such violation of law has voided their capture."., , -" ' j - |