"We protest against the practice prevailing in Prague as against means quite contradictory to the moral principles of modern journalism, as in Prague the newspapers are forced to publish articles supplied by the Official Press Bureau, as though written by the editor, without being allowed to mark them as inspired. Thus the journals are not in reality edited by the editors themselves, but by the Press institution of the state."
The same union again protested on November 16, 1917
"After the victorious Russian Revolution which brought about also the opening of the Reichsrat, the fetters binding the Czech press were a little relaxed, but only for a short time, and to-day we see the same conditions prevailing in which we lived for the first three years of war. Every free reflection in the Czech journals is confiscated. They are even prohibited to publish articles which appeared in the German and Austrian press. Furthermore, they are again compelled to publish articles written by officials without marking them as such. They cannot even inform their readers correctly about parliamentary debates, as speeches and interpellations delivered in parliament are suppressed. We ask the Union of Czech Deputies to protest again against this violation of parliamentary immunity, and to obtain a guarantee that in future the Czech papers will not be compelled to print articles not written by the editorial staff and that the Czech press shall enjoy at least the same freedom as the press in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest."
[(d) Reichsrat Interpellations]
To complete the picture of Austrian terrorism, we will quote some of the interpellations addressed to the Austrian Government by Czech deputies in the summer of 1917.
The Czech deputies Prokeš, Jaroš and Charvát (Socialists) have demanded an explanation from the Minister for Home Defence respecting 300 Czech teachers from Moravia who were interned in 1915, being suspected of disloyalty, although there was no charge made against them either by the civil or by the military authorities. They were first interned in Lower Austria and then in Hungary, and had to do the hardest work. Though the educational authorities reclaimed them they were not set free even to attend to the burials of their relatives. The only exception made was when one teacher was allowed to be married in Vienna, and even then he was followed by the guard with fixed bayonets. In Hungary the conditions were still worse, and many of these teachers died and many of them are still in hospitals.
A long interpellation was addressed to the government by the Czech deputies Biňovec, Filipinský and Stejskal (Socialists) regarding the outrageous and inhuman treatment of the Czech political prisoners. They mentioned a vast number of appalling instances of deliberate torturing and starving of the prisoners. All rights of the prisoners were suspended and they depended entirely on the will of the commander: many of these political prisoners were imprisoned together with ordinary murderers; they were not allowed to read books or to write letters; their families were not permitted to visit them or even to send them provisions from home, so they starved in prison. Such cruel treatment did not affect only political prisoners but even people on remand, and it was nothing extraordinary for them to be imprisoned for years on remand only. The deputies asked whether the authorities wanted these prisoners to die from starvation.
The most interesting document is the interpellation of deputies Staněk, Tobolka and Co. on the persecutions against the Czech nation during the war. The interpellation has been published as a book of 200 pages which has been prohibited by Austria to be sent abroad, but a copy of which we have nevertheless been able to secure. The following are short extracts from the volume:
The Behaviour of the Austrian Government towards the Czech Nation during the War
"YOUR EXCELLENCY,--At a time when it proved impossible to continue to rule in an absolute way in this empire and when after more than three years the Reichsrat is sitting again, we address to you the following interpellation in order to call your attention to the persecutions which during the past three years have been perpetrated on our nation, and to demand emphatically that these persecutions shall be discontinued. They were not done unintentionally or accidentally, but, as will be shown from the following survey, this violence was committed deliberately and systematically by the Austrian Government on our nation, which took the abominable view that the present war is the most suitable period for realising the plans and aims of German centralism in the Habsburg Monarchy by curing the Czechs forever of all hallucinations about equality among nations, and about the glorious past of Bohemia and her relationship with other Slav nations. A general attack was made upon the Czech nation during the critical situation created by the war: our participation in civil service was curtailed, German was made the official language of the state, the press was muzzled, schools persecuted, the Sokol idea declared to be high treason, men distinguished for service in the state arrested, imprisoned, persecuted and sentenced to death, everything reminding the population of the famous past of Bohemia removed, the ancient Czech aspirations for political independence or even aims for a mere reorganisation of the Habsburg Monarchy on a federal basis were not allowed and were suppressed, even the name of the ancient kingdom of Bohemia, which was the foundation stone to the Habsburg Monarchy in 1526, was to disappear for ever.