Page:Edvard Beneš – Bohemia's case for independence.pdf/70

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56
BOHEMIA'S CASE FOR INDEPENDENCE

soldiers to carry the colours and standards. Since then every company of Czech soldiers going to the station of Prague for the front is escorted by a double number of German and Magyar soldiers. Nobody is allowed to speak to them as they pass through the streets, or to say "Good-bye," or even to smile at them, and the German soldiers who march on either side of the Czech soldiers see to it that no such crime is committed—and punishments are reserved for any offenders.

The Czech soldiers, however, took their revenge as soon as they got on the battlefield, and acted in conformity with their sentiments. The 11th Czech Regiment of the town of Písek, who refused to march on Valjevo in Serbia, was on two different occasions decimated. The rest were put in the front of Serbian guns and finally crushed by the Magyar artillery, who seeing themselves in danger thus cruelly revenged themselves on the Czechs.

The 36th Regiment of Mladá Boleslav were mutinous in barracks and were consequently massacred; the 88th Regiment, who attempted to surrender in the Carpathians, succumbed to the cross fire of the Prussian Guards and the Magyar Honveds. The 35th Regiment from the town at Pilsen, sent by train to the battlefield of Galicia, found themselves half an hour after their arrival in the Russian trenches, where they were enthusiastically received. A part of the regiment who