Page:Edvard Beneš – Bohemia's case for independence.pdf/88

74 under strict police supervision. The country was depopulated—hundreds of people were shot when the Russians arrived in the Carpathians, and all Slovak papers and publications were suppressed. Today the country is absolutely silenced, and Tizsa's Magyar Government is triumphant.

Finally, the Austrian Government, completely in the hands of the Prussians, have decided to proceed with measures of Germanisation. The rights relative to the usage of the Czech language in the administration, before the courts of law, or on the railways—rights which for two generations had been the cause of severe political struggles—-were abolished by a single stroke of the pen. The railways were entrusted to the Prussian military; the Czech language was suppressed in administrative and other Civil Service offices, where it was formerly lawfully employed; the Czechs were deprived of their appointments as magistrates and other positions of authority. In this way is attempted the complete Germanisation and absorption of the Czechs and Austrian Slavs by the Prussians.

Such is approximately the state of affairs in Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia. The people, deprived of their most elementary rights and victuals, impoverished by a devastating war, martyred by brutal and cruel persecutions on the part of the police, military, and government,