AUSTRIAN ATROCITIES

Taranaki Daily News, 7 November 1916, Page 5

AUSTRIAN ATROCITIES

A TERRIBLE INDICTMENT,

,„• There is a general tendency to regaril ■£ho Austrians as much more humaiMf 'energies than tlio Germans, but nothing on the criminal side of, the ijar ««W warpass for bestiality and crueHjy; * lengthy report just issued in .hook fonnl by Sinipkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Ken* and to., upon the atrocities committed! l>y the Austro-Hungarian army durinfl' the first invasion of Serbia. The conn pilcr of the report is" a "nenttat-JftpJ fossor K. A. of the University pt Lausanne. ' , . In every case the name of the eye* wHue»s from whom the information turn omaivti is given, * n( l tho-Vrepori*' inelwlci a number of photographs -which depict Rome of the horrors perpetrated) by "the invading army. The eyo-wit- » nesses' tell .stories of aim, women andt children mutilated, 'bayoneted or knifed; burned alive, killed in massacres, beaten) to death with rifles or sticks, stone* to death, hanged and bound end tor> tured. It is impossible even to binti at, much less describe in the.se column*, some of the atrocities committed hjj the disseminators of kulvur. ' ' ' On. frequent occasions the . AV-Stro--Hungarian army was guilty oE killing captive or wounded Serbian soldiers. But ti>e treutment,,«nd thi killing and mutilation, of civilians forms the tflostf terrible part of 'Professor Reiss' hrdlftr lrieni

There- (ire many poges o£ utorJes of worse atrocities—of old men and boyas tied together, fliown their grarov *f>s then shot; of civilianr. herded together and then set upon and exterminated tiy, the bayonet; of women hanged to trees; and of women, children and old men placed in front of Austrian troop* during a battle. "* , ' At one place,: 100 civilians, between eight nnd eighty years of age, Were taken to a spot near the (station, where a large pit had already been prftpired. The arms of the victims were pinidtted and the whole group were Mirrourijled) by a coil of wire. Thor. the soldiiw took up their position on an emtoank ment, of the railway a short' detuned from the pit, and from there, fired' ti volley. Everybody fell , pell-mell into the pit, which was immediately covered in with earth, without any trnuhlo being tokento verify whether the persons shot war* dead or still living. It appear* certain that many of the victim* were nor mortally wounded, and that somo' per Imps were not wounded at all, hut iha* they were nil dragged into the couiOwp pit by the rest.