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Show EDITORIAL FORGOTTEN PRISONERS While sympathy was being drummed up for the self-styled political prisoners slackers, spies, opponents of draft, nearly 200 military prisoners were entirely en-tirely forgotten, left to serve their excessive long terms that court martials had handed them. A Chicago newspaper tells how one of the last freed I. W. W.'s leaving Leavenworth spoke to a military prisoner at the gate and said,"You went to the front in 1917 and we stayed behind, don't , you wish y5u had done the way we did? iThe military prisoners took the risk of battle, they endured the wet, muddy trenches, long, tiresome marches, interrupted meals they worked like slaves. A great deal of allowance should have been made fo the stress and strain of the times ; much should have been allowed for the un- lamiliarity of. . military discipline. discip-line. There was an assurance made from Washington that in most of these instances the sentences sen-tences were merely formal and were not carried out, altho, to be exact, there are now 176 of these men in Leavenworth, and in the light of the revelations regarding regard-ing these forgotten prisoners some doubt arises as to that assurance. as-surance. It is said army rules forbid a prisoner to ask for clemency clem-ency more than once a year, but it seems when members of the I. W. W. have been permitted to go scott free it is high time ' that something was being done for those who went through the tortures of hell "over there," V and that every one of the cases I should be reviewed, and quick- ly too. |
