The Sun. — 1865-09-02 (London, England)

LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPT. 2, 1865.  -o Mutual recriminations are not uncommon at the conclusion of a great struggle between two parties, whether the area of contention has been the battlefield or the political assembly. It is therefore very natural that so fierce and bitter a war as that which has just come to a conclusion in the United States should give rise to more than the ordinary share of complaints and accusations. One of the chief subjects for animadversion on both sides has been the treatment received by prisoners of war, and if half the assertions on either side are to be believed, the old laws of chivalry and the modern doctrines of Christian humanity are alike omitted from the American military code. The truth probably would be somewhere between the two extremes, but the Confederates have certainly an excuse for any scant provision on their part, which the Federals are entirely without. They were on short allowance themselves, and even if they gave their prisoners the best they had the result would still have been very different from what the North with its open ports and unlimited resources was able to do. The Federals themselves, in the refinement of their cruelty, proclaimed medical stores to be included in the articles declared contraband of war, and they, therefore, can hardly blame the Confederates for not giving the sick those articles which their state required. The proposal to allow the prisoners on both sides to be supplied by their friends, originated, we believe, with General LEE, but the Federals soon contrived to introduce ill-will and confusion into this arrangement by insinuating suspicions that the Southern officials appropriated the stores destined for the sick prisoners. This accusation produced its natural fruits, and the transmission of storeswas for a time suspended. Again, in the question of exchange, the Northern party were for a long time averse to anything that could benefit their opponents, even though at the same time it gave relief to their own side. The Federals, it must be admitted, showed great harshness and injustice by introducing the system of shooting so many of their prisoners, in retaliation for real or fancied injuries to Federal partisans. On one occasion, after several prisonershad been thus executed, because a Northern man was missing, the man returned. The Federal General could not, however, bid his victims return from the graves to which he had hurried them. The Federals have taken every opportunity and adopted every means in their power to bring accusations of cruelty against their enemies, and have resorted to not very honourable or truthful methods to substantiate their charges. It is currently believed in America that the gaunt and dismal photographs which are exhibited as specimens of Southern cases of Northern prisoners were taken from some hopeless invalids whom the Confederate generals, in compassion, sent to their homes unexchanged that they might die among their friends. " Photographs cannot lie," it is said, but nothing prevents their exhibitors from doing so; if a portrait taken in one condition is said be taken in another the lookers-on are as mach deceived as if the likeness were itself deceptive. There have been letters  published from prisoners on both sides, but it is noticeable that of those which have appeared in the English journals the prisoners in the Northern States denounce the severity of their treatment, while the ex-inmates of Southern prisons declare the treatment they received to be considerate and humane, and as good as it was in the power of their captors to give. Under these circumstances it is rather an outrage upon common sense, as well as a breach of military good faith, for a Southern official to be brought under trial on a charge of ill-using and murdering Federal prisoners. Yet such is the case. Captain Win, ex-commandant of the Confederate military prison at Andersonville, Georgia, has been tried before a military Commission at Washington accused of a conspiracy with Gen. LEE, Secretary SEDDON, and other officials, to destroy the prisoners under his charge by shooting, starvation, and barbarous treatment. Captain Wiaz denies the charge, and, besides, takes just exception to his arraignment, since he was included in the terms agreed upon between SHERMAN and