The Kingdom of serbia : report upon the atrocities committed by the Austro-Hungarian Army during the first invasion of Serbia

146 AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN ATROCITIES

to death with the butt-ends of rifles, they were butchered and hanged, burnt alive and even mutilated.

These methods are quite opposed to the customary methods observed in executing francs-tireurs.

2. Among the victims tabulated in my statistics there are 82 children under 10, 8 of whom were not even one year old, there are 306 women, and a very large number of old men of over 60 years of age. Itisimpossible to suppose that babes of 2 and 3 months, or old men of 95 should be francs-tireurs.

8. When an army is compelled to resort to executions, then, as I said before, the guilty parties are shot. How is it then that among the civil victims of the Austrian invasion there should be so large a number of wounded? Is it possible that the Austrian High Command has invented a semiexecution by which the victim is wounded but not killed ?

No! The tardy excuses of the Austrian officials fall to the ground. Their army has methodically carried out a mission of extermination, and the butchery of children, women and old men is part of that mission.

ET a aE