Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1918-07-02
Austrian Prison Life
Italian Captives Suffer Terrible
Experiences De-
scribed by Officer.

Arnaldo Fraccaroli. correspond
ent of the Corriere della Sera, or
Milan, paints a disagreable picture
of Austrian prison life, based upon
reports from Italian invalids re-
Gently returned from Austro-Hun-
garian concentration camps. He
points out that only a brief stay in
an Austrian prison camp has been
sufficient to open the eyes OF those
few who let themselves be cap
tured, thinking that they would
end the war by their own defeat.
OF these prisoners who had sur
rendered willingly an Italian ON
Ger who had spent some time IN an
Austrian prison is quoted as say
ing:
IF these soldiers could return
to our front and have a rifle in
their hands each of them would be
worth 10 brave soldiers, One month
in Austria teaches one to love italy
passionately, with all ones heart
ana might"
I'm the Austrian concentration
camps" SAYS Arnaldo FraccarOE,
Officers can exist only with the
help of their own resources. But
the common soldiers are treated
worse. They have not enough TO
eat. They perish, languish and be
come Weakened. Strong and
healthy men are so reduced that
| they hardly have any strength left.
In the prison camp of Mathausen
there died last winter from thirty
to forty men each day. OF what?
From lack of nutrition.
"In Mathausen every morning at
| 10 o'clock the trumpets give the
signal. It is the funeral hour.
! There are funerals every day. The
dead-our dead soldiers-are being
stripped completely of everything
and placed two in a cOffin-r there
are any collins.
ION their arrival in the concen-
| tration camps the soldiers taken
| prisoners are being stripped OF
everything linen, helmets
and shoes. They receive filthy uni
| forms Of a dark chestnut texture
that do not keep them warm and
| can hardly serve as clothing. The
! prisoners of CaporettO'-that is
/ how they call those captured lass
October-have suffered more than
all others, not because Of any diff
| ference in treatment-Off Aus
| tria does not make any sentiment
| tai distinctions: she treats all
equally badly-but because at that
time prisoners were gathered in by
the thousands. quartered in tho
! streets, dispatched in companies on
foot, left without food or shelter,
abandoned for entire days on fields
| of assembling and trains. Hunger,
| cold, filthiness, insults and blows -
| they have suffered everything.
t When they arrived in the conCen-
! tration camps they were easily rec
| ognized as the prisoners of CapO-
retto' by the suffering figures which
| they presented On these masses
which had suffered and had been
weakened so much death threw it
self with the most furious ferocity.
/ If the soldiers at the front could
only see some of the disabled men
whom the Austrians are returning
| TO Italy and then read some Of the
circulars in which the Austrians
are inviting the italian soldiers to
desert because they would be treat
| ed well,
Every now and then the Aus
TRANS are making a tour of the
| prison camps to select soldiers for
work in the trenches. Everybody
knows that from those expeditions
one almost never returns or one
returns as a phantom