innocent Czechs, men, women and children, were confined, we will only quote
the revelations of the Czech National Socialist deputy Stribrny, who
declared in the Reichsrat on June 14, 1917:

"This war was begun by the Austrian Government without the consent of
the Austrian Parliament, against the will of the Czech people.

"In Bohemia, the most brutal cruelties have been perpetrated by the
Austrian authorities against the Czech population. An anonymous
denunciation suffices to bring about the arrest and imprisonment of any
Czech man, woman or child. Thousands of Czech citizens have simply been
seized and placed in internment camps on the ground that their
political opinions are dangerous to the existence of Austria.

"Such prisoners were led away from their homes handcuffed and in
chains. They included women, girls and old grey-haired men. They were
conveyed from their homes to internment camps in filthy cattle trucks
and were cruelly ill-treated with a strange persistence. On one
occasion forty-three Czechs, who were being conveyed to a camp of
internment, were killed on the way by a detachment of Honveds
(Hungarian militia) which was escorting them to their place of
imprisonment.

"The conditions under which the Czechs were interned at the Talerhof
Camp, near Graz, were absolutely outrageous. They were beaten and
tortured on their way there. Immediately after their arrival many were
tied to stakes and kept thus day and night in absolutely indescribable
sanitary conditions. Many were done to death by their guards. When the
thermometer showed 20 degrees of frost, old men, women and girls were
left to sleep in the open air, and mortality increased amongst them to