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 previously, that he could not even give them any warning, that he had opposed Mates von Thurn "almost to bodily violence", that Mathes von Thurn was a "false and notorious man", who had shamefully misled and deceived the gentleman of rank, that Šlik had not laid hands on the Emperor's representatives,—poor rebel, this explanation availed him nothing; on March 18th he was seized by the Kurfürst of Saxony, handed over to the Emperor's justices, and on June 21st he was executed in the square of the Old Town. All revolutions, whether active or passive, produce people such as Šlik; they undertake and carry them out in the conviction that their cause is just, but then when their cause comes to grief, they desert it, disguise it, deny it and conceal it,—as if defence of this kind had ever helped those who were, defeated, and could ward off the vengeance of those who had conquered.

My case was clear and free from guile,—thank God. All these poems were written long before the war, printed several times,—I did not need to deny and conceal, I could not indeed have played so pitiable and aimless part as Count Jáchym Ondřej Šlik.

And so I dictated for the report: The first three poems appeared in Čas in the years 1905, 1908 and 1913, without arousing any objections; the last one appeared in Samostatnost in 1913.. In book form they were issued,—again without arousing any objections,—in my collected feuilletons, then "bei Umgruppierung meiner Werke" (to use the modern term), I included them in a volume of short and topical lyric poems entitled "Drops", which I might call my diary.

"And by printing them during the war you have committed a new criminal offence" remarked Dr. Frank.

"Only that they were confiscated as far back as September 27th