AUSTRIAN "JUSTICE."

Mataura Ensign, 14 November 1917, Page 6

AUSTRIAN "JUSTICE."

* SEXTRA CES OX CIVILIANS-. How “justice" was administered by the Austrian Military Court is described ,in a series of articles by the Vienna ‘Arbeiter Zeitung’ in order to prove the necessity for 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 Char and General Rcmiaiihampf, 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 l two copies was sentenced to death. Another man who was present when the copies were made re coived 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 20 schoolboys from lo to IS years of age were .sentenced altogether to 24 years’ penal servitude. * The sum total of the 40 sentences pronounced was six capita! son fences and 91 years’ penal servitude.