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

184 AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN ATROCITIES

Here is an incitement to murder pure and simple. Every man found in the fields is a comitadji who has to be killed. Truly it is difficult to believe that we live in the twentieth century !

This document, which I can only describe as an invitation to massacre both civil population and soldiers, winds up with the following words :

“Once more discipline, dignity, but the greatest severity and harshness.”

It is idle to insist further on the undeniable fact that the men were systematically prepared for the work of massacre by their officers. The mere perusal of the evidence and of this fantastic docu. ment suffices to prove it.

Both evidence and documents also attest the fact of premeditation and of a very long preparation. The consequences of this preparation were not slow in making themselves felt, The Austro-Hungarian soldiers, finding themselves on Serbian territory and face to face with these people who had always been represented to them as barbarians, were frightened. It is from fear, lest they should be massacred themselves, that they probably perpetrated their first cruelties.

But at the sight of blood, the phenomenon took place which T have often had occasion to observe : man was transformed into a bloodthirsty brute. A positive access of collective Sadic frenzy seized upon the troops, the type of frenzy which everyone who has attended a bull-fight has been able to observe on a small scale. Once the bloodthirsty and Sadic

I Nochmals : Mannszucht, Wiirde, aber grosste Strenge und Hiirte.

Sel