Page:Edvard Beneš – Bohemia's case for independence.pdf/135

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APPENDIX
121

of their Parliamentary mandates. Needless to say, this magnanimous act of the Emperor was not disinterested, but had an ulterior motive,

Count Clam-Martinitz composed an official communiqué, published on January 4th, 1917, which enumerated the motives of the sentence, stigmatised the horrid treason of the Czechs in the army and abroad, and ended by the resolution mentioned above, that the Czech nation is not entirely corrupt, and that its leaders may yet reinstate themselves in the eyes of their mother-country, Austria-Hungary.

Thus for the first time the monstrous judgment on Kramář was officially made known. The following is the text of the document:—

"The verdict of the Court of First Instance was that Dr Kramář was active against his own State before and after the outbreak of war, as the leader of the Pan-SIav propaganda and of the Russophil movement in Bohemia, by consciously co-operating with the enterprises which aimed at the destruction of the Monarchy. A widespread and organised revolutionary propaganda has been initiated in enemy as well as in neutral countries with the object of destroying our Monarchy by the severance of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Slovakia, and other lands inhabited by Slavs; the bringing about and increase of internal dangers in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy; the preparation of revolts and