AUSTRIAN BARBARITIES.

Taihape Daily Times, 6 December 1917, Page 3

AUSTRIAN BARBARITIES.

DEATH SENTENCES FOR COPYING A DOCUMENT. How “ justice” was administered by tlie Austrian military courts is described, says an Amsterdam telegram in a series of articles by the Vienna "Arbeit* Zeitung,” in order to prove tho necessity of a general amnesty. The journal states that in September 1914, a young lady clerk wrote a letter to her uncle, enclosing a copy of the Proclamation by the Tsar and Gon ; eral Eennenkampf which was dropped on the Austrian lines from a Russian aeroplane. The girl was sentenced to death. Her uncle read the Proclamation to a bank official, who gave three copies to friends of his. He and one of the officials were sentenced to death and two friends of the official were sentenced to five and three years penal servitude respectively. A third friend, who lent a copy to a colleague, who made two copies, was sentenced to death. Another man who was present when the copies were made received three years’ penal servitude, and a man who made a copy was sentenced to death. Copies of this Proclamation came into the hands of a schoolboy, who took them to school with the result that twenty schoolboys from fifteen to eighteen years of. age, were sentenced altogether to twentyfour years’ penal servitude. The total sum of the 39 sentences pronounced was six capital sentences, and ninety-one years” servitude.