AMERICAN SPY RELEASED.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15489, 17 January 1916, Page 4

AMERICAN SPY RELEASED.

MR ROOSEVELT'S TLEA FOlt MERCY. BRITISH MAGNANIMITY. (from orr. own coiuiEsroNDENt.) LONDOX, December 3. Kenneth G. Triest, a ninctcen-ycar-old Princeton student, lias just arrived in New York in the custody of his father, and his safe home-coming furnishes the American papers with the text ot numerous leaders on the. contrast between British and German methods. Triest, imprisoned in London, was to have been tried for his ]ifo when tho lather secured the intercession of Mr Roosevelt, on the ground that his son was of unsound mind. Mr Roosevelt lvroto to Sir C. Snring-Rice, tlie British Ambassador, a statement of tho case, with the result as sot forth in the following letter from Mjr Roosevelt to .Senator Waimvright. counsel for the prisoner's father: — "My dear Wainwright,—l havo received from the British Ambassador at Washington a letter stating that Sir Edward Grey and Mr Balfour havo carefully gone over the facts about Mr Triest, as set. forth in my letter. They tell mo that they find that Triest shows no f»igns of madness, but may have an unbalanced mind, and that the British Government are prepared ,to givo him the benefit of tho doubt. What they arc prepared to agree to, is the following: If tho father comes over to England and makes himself responsible for taking his son in his own personal charge, and escort back to America, the boy will bo handed over without being brought to trial."

Mr Roosevelt suggested that the lacl, if still of unbalanced mind, should! bo sent to ;i. sanatorium until the war iover, and that if he had recovered by then that he should be brought to him (Mi- Roosevelt), so that ho could explain the terrible ch'aracter of tho olFence ho had committed.

"I wish him to understand and appreciate," says Mr Roosevelt, "the contrast between the conduct of th© British Government in his case and the conduct of the German Government in permitting and sanctioning what, in order to be truthful, T can only describe as the butcherv of Miss Cavell. Miss Cavell was "butchered for actions such as were taken by hundreds, jirobably thousands, of women: in our Civil War. and it never entered the heads of either Union or Confederate Governments that it was possible to much as even to consider tho putting to death of these women. The execution of Miss Cavell was a deed of black horror, and when I saw the account of it I confess I did not believo the British Government would be in-, clined to show mercy to young Triest, for. of course, the British Government had a thousandfold more justification for insisting on tho execution of Triest than the German Government had for nutting to death Miss Cavell. The boy should be made to understand the mercy and magnanimity with which the British Government has treated him."

Both the father and counsel for Triest acknowledge tho mercy shown to the boy by the British Government.