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.