KAISER WILLIAM II OF GERMANY Posterity will regard him as more responsible than any other human being for the sacrifice of millions of lives in the great war, as a ruler who might have been beneficent and wise, but attempted to destroy the liberties of mankind and to raise on their ruins an odious despotism. To forgive him and to forget his terrible transgressions would be to condone them. FRANCIS JOSEPH I OF AUSTRIA, THE "OLD EMPEROR," ON A STATE OCCASION Francis Joseph died before the war had settled the fate of the Hapsburgs. The end came on November 21, 1916, in the sixty-eighth mately ready for it. Under the shelter of such high-sounding phrases as "We demand our place in the sun," and "The seas must be free," the German people were educated into the belief that the hour of Germany's destiny was at hand. GERMANY'S POSSESSIONS IN AFRICA PRIOR TO 1914 German psychologists, like other German scientists, had co-operated with the imperial militaristic government for many years to bring the Germanic mind into a condition of docility. So well did they understand the mentality and the trends of character of the German people that it was comparatively easy to impose upon them a militaristic system and philosophy by which the individual yielded countless personal liberties for the alleged good of the state. Rigorous and compulsory military service, unquestioning adherence to the doctrine that might makes right and a cession to "the All-Highest," as the Emperor was styled, of supreme powers in the state, are some of the sufferances to which the German people submitted. German propaganda abroad was quite as vigorous as at home, but infinitely less successful. The German High Command did not expect England to enter the war. It counted It counted upon America's neutrality with a leaning toward Germany. It believed that German colonization in South Africa and South America would incline these vast domains toward friendship for the Central empires. How mistaken the propagandists and psychologists were events have demonstrated. It was this dream of world-domination by Teutonic kultur that supplied the motive leading to the world's greatest war. Bosnia, an unwilling province of Austria-Hungary, at one time a province of Serbia and overwhelmingly Slavic in its population, had been seething for years with an anti-Teutonic ferment. The Teutonic court at Vienna, leading the minority Germanic party in Austria-Hungary, had been endeavoring to allay the agitation among the Bosnian Slavs. In pursuance of that policy, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir-presumptive to the thrones of Austria and Hungary, and his morganatic wife, Sophia Chotek, Duchess of Hohenberg, on June 28, 1914, visited Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. On the morning of that day, while they were being driven through the narrow streets of the ancient town, a bomb was thrown at them, but they were uninjured. They were driven through the streets again in the afternoon, for purpose of public display. A student, just out of his 'teens, one Gavrilo Prinzep, attacked the royal party with a magazine pistol and killed both the Archduke and his wife. Here was the excuse for which Germany had waited. Here was the dawn of "The Day." The Germanic court of Austria asserted that the crime was the result of a conspiracy, leading directly to the Slavic court of Serbia. The Serbians in their turn declared that they knew nothing of the assassination. They pointed out the fact that Sophia Chotek was a Slav, and that Francis Ferdinand was more liberal than any other member of the Austrian royal household, and finally, that he, more than any other member of the Austrian court, understood and respected the Slavic character and aspirations. At six o'clock on the evening of July 23d, Austria sent an ultimatum to Serbia, presenting eleven demands and stipulating that categorical replies must be delivered before six o'clock on the evening of July 25th. Although the language in which the ultimatum was couched was humiliating to Serbia, the answer was duly delivered within the stipulated time. The demands of the Austrian note in brief were as follows: 1. The Serbian Government to give formal assurance of its condemnation of Serb propaganda against Austria. 2. The next issue of the Serbian "Official Journal" was to contain a declaration to that effect. 3. This declaration to express regret that Serbian officers had taken part in the propaganda. 4. The Serbian Government to promise that it would proceed rigorously against all guilty of such activity. 5. This declaration to be at once communicated by the King of Serbia to his army, and to be published in the official bulletin as an order of the day. 6. All anti-Austrian publications in Serbia to be suppressed. 7. The Serbian political party known as the "National Union" to be suppressed, and its means of propaganda to be confiscated. 8. All anti-Austrian teaching in the schools of Serbia to be suppressed. 9. All officers, civil and military, who might be designated by Austria as guilty of anti-Austrian propaganda to be dismissed by the Serbian Government. 10. Austrian agents to co-operate with the Serbian Government in suppressing all anti-Austrian propaganda, and to take part in the judicial proceedings conducted in Serbia against those charged with complicity in the crime at Sarajevo. 11. Serbia to explain to Austria the meaning of anti-Austrian utterances of Serbian officials at home and abroad, since the assassination. To the first and second demands Serbia unhesitatingly assented. To the third demand, Serbia assented, although no evidence was given to show that Serbian officers had taken part in the propaganda. The Serbian Government assented to the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth demands also. Extraordinary as was the ninth demand, which would allow the Austrian Government to proscribe Serbian officials, so eager for peace and friendship was the Serbian Government that it |