The few soldiers who survived this crime related that it was an absolute carnage to which they were sent, as they were put in a place where they were inevitably massacred, and the incident has been used since to incite them. Prague was not duped, she well understood the odiousness of this detestable attempt on the part of the Viennese government to revenge itself, and than to make the fact serve its own interests.
Bad treatment of the Czech soldiers by German officers constantly led to disturbances, local mutinies, refusals to obey, which ended frequently in sanguinary brawls; and a number of plots were detected among the Czech soldiers to surrender en masse.
Towards the month of May 1915, after ten months of continuous effort, the Czechs had succeeded in completely disorganising the army. But at this period the Germans of the Empire took over the management of the Austro-Hungarian armies, disbanded the Czech regiments, and dispersed the Czech soldiers among German and Magyar regiments. Mass surrenders now became almost impossible. Yet in spite of all they continued their practices on the Isonzo front and notably in Transylvania, as was shown by the debates in the Hungarian Chamber on the 5th September 1916, and by the fury of the Magyars.
In all these cases the spirit which the Czech
