"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 a frightful extent. Two thousand unhappy victims of Austria's brutal tyranny lie buried in the cemetery attached to the Talerhof Camp of internment. Of these, 1200 died of epidemics."
Other information concerning the same camp of Talerhof fully corroborates this statement. In a letter to his friends, a Czech interned at Talerhof wrote as follows:
"Many of my friends died from bayonet wounds; out of 12,000 at least, 2000 have so perished. The majority of us did not know why we were interned. Many were hanged without a trial on mere denunciation. Human life had no value for them. The soldiers had orders to strike us with bayonets for the slightest movement....
"We were covered with insects. One day an order was given that everybody should undress to be rubbed with paraffin. Some ladies who objected were undressed by force before our eyes, since men and women slept together, and the soldiers rubbed them with paraffin.
"A Ruthene who protested against the ill-treatment of women, who were forced to do the lowest work, was bayonetted. He was lying for five days between two barracks more dead than alive. His face and body were all green and covered with lice and his hands were bound. Then the Austrian officers and soldiers ill-treated him till he died."
In consequence of the general political amnesty, over 100,000 political prisoners in Austria were released. Thousands of them emerged from prison or internment camps reduced to mere skeletons by the systematic lack of food.
According to reports published in the Austrian press, one of the Ukrainian prisoners, named Karpinka, was left in solitary confinement without any fire in winter, so that his feet were frost-bitten and had to be amputated.