_Professor Masaryk_, who escaped abroad in 1915, was sentenced to death in
Austria in December, 1916. Unable to reach him, the Austrian Government
revenged themselves on his daughter, Dr. Alice Masaryk, whom they
imprisoned. Only after an energetic press campaign abroad was she released.
A similar fate also met the wife of another Czech leader, Dr. Benes, who
escaped abroad in the autumn of 1915 and became secretary general of the
Czecho-Slovak National Council.

_Dr. Scheiner_, president of the "Sokol" Gymnastic Association, was
imprisoned, but was again released owing to lack of proofs. A similar fate
also met the Czech Social Democratic leader _Dr. Soukup_, who was for some
time kept in prison.

_(b) Monster Trials, Arbitrary Executions, Internment of Civilians, etc_.

A notorious reason for imprisonment, and even execution, was the possession
of the so-called Russian Manifesto dropped by Russian aeroplanes, being a
proclamation of the Tsar to the people of Bohemia promising them the
restoration of their independence. Mr. Matejovsky, of the Prague City
Council, and fifteen municipal clerks were sentenced to many years'
imprisonment for this offence in February, 1915. In May, 1915, six persons,
among them two girls, were condemned to death in Kyjov, Moravia, for the
same offence. On the same charge also sixty-nine other persons from Moravia
were brought to Vienna and fifteen of them sentenced to death. One of the
Czech girls who were executed for this offence was a Miss Kotikova, aged
twenty-one, who, according to the _Arbeiter Zeitung_ of September 8, 1917,
refused to say from whom she had received the manifesto, and through her
heroic attitude saved the lives of others.