24 FEBRUARY 1917, Page 14

REPRISA LS.

[To THE EDITOR Cr TEE " SPECTATOR."] S R ,—Arr. C. C. Lacaita, whose letter you published la.st Saturday, may be interested to hear of the way in which the Americans acted at the close of the great Secession War. Northern prisoners had been inhumanly treated—not by Confederate officers, the most chivalrous of men, and not by responsible Confederate officials —but by the commandant of the out-of-the-way prison " pen " at Audersonville in Georgia. This person, whose name, Johann Wirtz, seems to reveal the country of his origin, behaved to the prisoners in his charge with shocking inhumanity. Reports as to the state of things in tl:e Andersonville prison pen reached the Northern States and there was a loud, but by no means general, demand for retaliation. The Federal authorities resolutely refused to comply with this demand. When the war was over Johann Wirtz was put on his trial, his crimes were completely proved, and lie was hung by sentence of the Court which tried him.—I am,