“Morocco is easily worth a big war, or several.  At best—­and even prudent Germany is getting to be convinced of this—­war is only postponed and not abandoned.  Is such a postponement to our advantage?  They say we must wait for a better moment.  Wait for the deepening of the Kiel canal, for our navy laws to take full effect.  It is not exactly diplomatic to announce publicly to one’s adversaries, ’To go to war now does not tempt us, but three years hence we shall let loose a world war’—­No; if a war is really planned, not a word of it must be spoken; one’s designs must be enveloped in profound mystery; then brusquely, all of a sudden, jump on the enemy like a robber in the darkness.”  The heavy footed German had difficulty in moving with the stealth of a robber, but the policy here recommended was followed.

In 1914, the three years indicated by Wirth had expired.  There began to occur dark comings and goings; mysterious meetings and conferences on the continent of Europe.  The German emperor, accompanied by the princes and leaders of the German states, began to cruise the border and northern seas of the Fatherland, where they would be safe from listening ears, prying eyes, newspapers, telephones and telegraphs.  It became known that the Kaiser was cultivating the weak-minded Russian czar in an attempt to win his country from its alliance with England and France.  There were no open rumblings of war, but the air was charged with electricity like that preceeding a storm.

An unaccountable business depression affected pretty much the entire world.  Money, that most sensitive of all things, began to show nervousness and a tendency to go into hiding.  The bulk of the world was still asleep to the real meaning of events, but it had begun to stir in its dreams, as if some prescience, some premonition had begun to reach it even in its slumbers.

Finally the first big event occurred—­the tragedy that was not intended to accomplish as much, but which hastened the dawn of the day in which began the Spiritual Emancipation of the governments of earth.  The Archduke Francis Ferdinand, nephew of the emperor of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary and commander in chief of its army, and his wife the duchess of Hohenburg, were assassinated June 28, 1914, by a Serbian student, Gavrio Prinzip.  The assassination occurred at Sarajevo in Bosnia, a dependency, or rather, a Slavic state that had been seized by Austria.  It was the lightning flash that preceeded the thunder’s mighty crash.

Much has been written of the causes which led to the tragedy.  Prinzip may have been a fanatic, but he was undoubtedly aided in his act by a number of others.  The natural inference immediately formed was that the murder was the outcome of years of ill feeling between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, due to the belief of the people in the smaller state, that their aspirations as a nation were hampered and blocked by the German element in the Austrian empire.  The countries had been on the verge of war several years before over the seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria, and later over the disposition of Scutari and certain Albanian territory conquered in the Balkan-Turkish struggle.