Ads from today's Daily Telegraph

Some things never change.

Vanity, for instance.

The Daily Telegraph of London, on the same page it was reporting about the growing tensions in Europe, advertised a wonderful new compound, "Astrol, which prevented the graying of hair.

"One grey hair every minute—and each grey hair adding another day—to your age," the ad said. "This means that in a matter of weeks—at the end of a few months at most—your hair will be totally grey or even white, and a load of many years will be added to your appearance. This is the grave warning to those with the first sign of greyness approaching, and who neglect their hair. Think of the significance of this—of its urgent importance—of the insupportable handicap of many years suddenly thrust upon one's apparent age. Everywhere to-day is the same feeling that condemns age as dull, lacking in energy, lacking in charm."

You'd think the Huns were about to invade your follicles.

Astrol was touted as "the veritable elixir of a new life and new colour for the hair." All you have to do is send for a free sample of the concoction. The ad helpfully notes that Astrol is available for sale at chemists [pharmacies] everywhere.

Meanwhile, Harrod's was having an inventory-reduction sale on everything from ladies umbrellas to chairs and rugs. A competitor, Waring & Gillow, was advertising "an exceptional opportunity" for you to buy fine china and glass. The merchandise was offered at cost through July 31, which, at it would turn out, was to be the day that Germany delivered an ultimatum to Russia to back off on its support for Serbia or face war.

War fever

The tensions in Europe continue to build. By July 14, 1914, the hope for a pacific resolution of the crisis was diminishing. Austria-Hungary began taking a hostile tone toward its smaller neighbor, Serbia.

The Austrians now believe that it has established the "political-moral proofs" that Serbia was complicit in the assassination of their Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, by a Serbian nationalist, according to London's Daily Telegraph.

Officials in Vienna, Austria's capital, denounced the "unscrupulous methods" of the Serbs. "Conspiracy and assassination are considered the principal weapons of the Serv State and the Servian Press," a "highly connected" unnamed Austrian source told the newspaper.

(Many publications of the day used a "v" rather than a "b" for the name "Serbia."  The "v" was taken from the Greek but sometime after the war the "b" took its place. Remember, it wasn't all that long ago that Westerners called China's capital city "Peking," rather than the modern transliteration, "Beijing.")


The Serbian government denied any involvement in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In a statement advising its ambassadors abroad,  Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić called the killing "an outrage" that "has been most severely condemned in all circles of society."

Austro-Hungarian Empire in July 1914

"At a moment when Serbia is doing everything in her power to improve her relations with the neighbouring Monarchy, it is absurd to think that Serbia could have directly or indirectly been inspired acts of this kind," Pašić said in the dispatch.

But in the Balkans, rumor begets rumor.

On July 14, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador fled Belgrade, the Serbian capital, after hearing rumors that a mob was planning to attack his legation. He asked for police protection, but apparently that was not enough to comfort him, his family and his staff. The ambassador reached safety in Budapest, the capital of the dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The rumor of imminent mob assault on the legation was grounded in another rumor, namely that ethnic Serbs in Sarajevo, where the assassination took place, were about to be attacked by pro-Austrian residents of the city. Sarajevo was within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Whether any of these rumors proved true, The Daily Telegraph does not say. The newspaper had a correspondent in Vienna, where most of its reporting originated, but apparently it had no one stationed in either Belgrade or Sarajevo. Moreover, communication between nations was neither immediate nor wholly effective. Back then, rumors were easy to start but hard to knock down, especially with language barriers and long-standing ethnic distrust.

French Senator Charles Humbert

Elsewhere in Europe, the French Senate began poring through the government's new budgets for the Army and Navy. The vice president of the Army Commission, Senator Charles Humbert, created a sensation by revealing that France was not well prepared in the event of war.

Humbert said that with the passage of time, French field artillery had become inferior to the Germans'. The supply of weapons and ammunition was insufficient to meet the Army's needs. The fortifications at Toul and Verdun hadn't been improved in nearly 40 years. Soldiers even lacked enough boots for a protracted campaign.

The French Army was counting on taking the offensive immediately if war with the Germans broke out, but Humbert disclosed that it didn't have enough equipment to breach the Moselle and Rhine rivers for the long-planned drive toward Berlin.

The Minister of War, Adolphe Messimy, had no response to Humbert's report, saying he was receiving the information for the first time. 

Former Premier Georges Clemenceau, whose party was now in opposition to the government, said "he had not attended such a heart-rending sitting since 1870," when the Prussians invaded, marched through Paris and annexed Alsace-Lorraine. 

Retaking those provinces from Germany was the prime goal of France in the event of war. 

Rasputin: Not so dead after all

Grigori Rasputin, the "mad monk" who exercised enormous influence in the Court of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, was stabbed on July 12, 1914, and "is now lying at death's door."

The Petersburg Kurier said Rasputin was attacked by a woman wielding a military-style dagger. She plunged it into in his abdomen and then tried to kill herself by slashing her wrist with a piece of glass.

The woman, a 28-year-old peasant named Gusesva, failed her attempt at suicide. She later told police that Rasputin was a false prophet who was leading the country astray.

An unconfirmed report in one wire service claimed that Rasputin had died.

Gregori Rasputin

Not so fast. He recovered and went on to live another two and a half years until meeting his final fate in a murder that remains legendary to this day.

The attempted assassination in July 1914 was widely reported throughout Europe.


You probably know the rest of the tale: Rasputin, a mystic and wandering pilgrim, had caught the eye of Czarina Alexandra in 1905. Two years later, the Czarina's sole son and heir to the throne was injured and lay bleeding. The boy had hemophilia. When doctors couldn't provide a cure, Alexandra turned to Rasputin, who was believed to have healing powers through prayer. For whatever reason, the boy recovered.

The mystic soon became involved in Russian politics, advising the Czar not to go to war with Germany in the days leading up to the World War. "If Russia goes to war, it will be the end of the monarchy, of the Romanovs and of Russian institutions," he purportedly wrote on the eve of the conflict.

The prognosis proved correct, but the Russian aristocracy didn't take kindly to his meddling, especially after he began advising the Czar on war tactics. In December 1916, Rasputin was murdered. Legend has it that he was poisoned, to no apparent effect, then shot and clubbed. His corpse was dumped into a river. Debate continues over whether the murder story was true or embellished.

British suffragettes step up militancy in pre-war 1914

Two weeks after the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, the tragedy already had slipped from public consciousness in Britain and France. That was no so in Austria and Serbia. Behind the scenes, diplomats in the two countries continued to manage the situation. It was, of course, a Serbian nationalist (supported by elements of the Serbian intelligence service) who committed the murder.

Suffragette arrest in London in 1914

In the latest news from Vienna, there was little clue that the assassination might become anything more than a matter of diplomatic exchanges. As The Telegraph of London reported, the latest Austrian communication to Belgrade "will not assume the form of interference in Servia's [sic] sovereign rights, and nothing will be asked of her which could be regarded in Belgrade as either an affront or a humiliation." Austria will ask, though, that Serbia make available to Austrian authorities anyone implicated in the assassination, inasmuch as the crime occurred within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Beyond the walls of the government ministries, life went on as usual.

As suffragettes in the United States continued their policy of political activism and demonstrating that women could do most everything a man could do, Britain's suffragette movement turned to militancy. The trigger occurred in 1912, when Prime Minister H.H. Asquith reneged on a promise to give women over the age of 30 the right to vote. The time of peaceful persuasion seemed to have gotten them nowhere. 

Led by Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragettes conducted hunger strikes, smashed store windows and chained themselves to railings to demonstrate that they no longer would tolerate policy-makers' inaction on the question of a woman's right to vote. Hunger strikes provoke violent reactions. Jailers took to force-feeding women with tubes to prevent martyrdom. As a political matter, that policy backfired.

Some suffragettes even turned to bombing. On July 9, 1914, two women tried to blow up the Scottish birthplace of beloved poet Robert Burns. Shortly after two o'clock in the morning, a watchman spotted two figures in the nighttime gloom approaching the public entrance to the cottage where Burns was born. He caught one of the them but the other escaped. Officialdom and the male public alike were alarmed to discover that the mysterious figure was a woman who was wearing men's apparel: trousers, waterproof coats, boots and men's caps. 

Suffragette poster

Found on the grounds of the cottage were two bombs, complete with fuses.

When the woman was brought to court later in the morning to face charges, she refused to enter the dock and claimed the court had no jurisdiction over her. She proceeded to quote passages from Burns' poem "Scots What Hae," which bemoaned political oppression in Scotland and called for a "glorious struggle for freedom." By refusing suffrage, the woman argued, Britain was rendering women as slaves.

The cottage was a popular tourist destination, receiving 60,000 visitors in the previous year.

By coincidence, that same day, The Telegraph reported that a newly published British employment census found that, for the first time, more women were employed in clerical and industrial occupations than in domestic service. Within the previous decade, the ranks of women working outside domestic service had doubled. The days of fully staffed maid service at "Downton Abbey" were ending.

Anna (at left) and other maids at "Downton Abbey"

During the war, the suffragettes called for a "cease fire," as Pankhust put it, to participate patriotically on the home front. They became nurses and assisted soldiers sent home from the front lines to recuperate from battle injuries (again, you'll see this in the "Downton Abbey" series on PBS). They were typists and clerks, mostly the customary female roles. However, when men rushed to enlist in the Army and fight, women took on jobs previously meant exclusively for men: working in factories and on loading docks, for instance.

The suffragettes' many contributions during the war accelerated the progress toward the rights they had so long demanded. As The Great War drew to a close in late 1918, British women finally got the right to vote.

As for the other major players in The Great War, leading on this issue was, ironically, politically backward Russia. In 1907 the Czar allowed women to vote in the Grand Duchy of Finland, which was part of the Russian Empire. Immediately women were elected to the Finnish Parliament.

Hoffman's Ball Bearing factory in England, 1914

Post-war Germany approved women's suffrage in late 1918. The United States followed suit two years later. In Italy, the date was 1925. Belgium in 1921 allowed widows of war veterans to vote but did not extend the franchise universally until after the Second World War. Turkey, the main remnant of the Ottoman Empire, granted suffrage in 1930. France was the holdout. It waited until 1944, as Nazi troops were being driven from French soil, to grant women the right to vote.

The first woman to lead a major power from The Great War was Margaret Thatcher, elected in Britain in 1975. 

Meanwhile in England in early July 1914, the communications revolution continued apace. In London, a delivery van was retrofitted with a complete wireless installation so it could keep in contact with the head office—the first innovation of its kind, apparently. And London's buses began employing interpreters to assist foreign tourists to the capital.

In the United States, a conference of the National Education Association, a campaigner for public schools and the profession of teaching (and later an advocate for higher teacher pay), declared that "sex hygiene" should be taught by parents, not the schools. School-based instruction "will tend to lead to a lower standard of morality," as delegate Charles Keene put it. Also on July 9, the teachers group approved a resolution endorsing the use of cinema in the schools. Such instruction "would give visuality and quicken the imagination of a child to a far greater degree in a few minutes' time than a textbook would in days of study."

And, in a deliberate affront to European nobility, a congressman from Ohio proposed legislation requiring that United States citizens who marry foreigners with titles be subject to an additional 25 percent on their federal income tax.

In Germany, author and poet Johan Waltz was put on trial on July 10 for treason. His offense: writing a children's book was unflattering to German rule in Alsace-Lorraine, the border provinces which Germany extracted from France as a consequence of its victory in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The book describes the "patriotic arrogance" of the German schoolmaster. "Altogether the book would seem calculated to the minds of its youthful readers the idea that France is a land of freedom and delight, and Germany is one of oppression and suffering," The Telegraph reported. Rather than face one year in jail. Waltz managed to flee to France days before the war began. 

Germany annexed Alsace-Lorraine in the 1870 war, thinking that the action would create a buffer should France ever try to go to war again. Instead it created 40 years of instability. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck warned against acquiring the provinces because their residents would prove irreconcilable. Indeed they were.

The annexation was one of that factors that propelled France to fight in 1914. One of the main battlefields from the very first day of the war: Alsace-Lorraine.

Archduke is buried; domestic concerns predominate

The viewing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were buried with appropriate ceremony in the Austrian town of Artstetten despite a pouring rain. The storm foreshadowed the coming disaster that was to wash across the continent in just three weeks. Few forecast the catastrophe awaiting the world.

Certainly not the "well-informed correspondent" cited by The Daily Telegraph of London. He wrote that "it may confidently be expected that the Monarchy will continue to pursue the pacific and steadfast policy which is notoriously dear to the aged Emperor and his confidential advisers. Nor will the loss of the Heir Apparent ... affect that policy in the long run."

Oh, really? Nothing could be further from the truth. Only two years ago, Austria-Hungary conquered Bosnia-Herzegovina in one of the two Balkan wars of that period. The Austrian military was now casting a covetous eye on Serbia, one of whose citizens was responsible for the assassination of the Archduke. That killer, Gavrilo Princip, had sought avenge the taking of Bosnia and its capital, Sarajevo. Germany was urging the Austrians to act. The newspaper took at face value the judgment of the "well-informed correspondent."

Behind the scenes, European militaries were reviewing their war plans, just in case. Germany's plan was most advanced, having been in place for nearly a decade. As usual, the Germans' was most thorough. Their Schleiffen plan was so detailed that it contained railroad schedules listing how many trains of troops, armaments and supplies would pass a given train bridge en route to assembly points should mobilization be decreed. France had its Plan 17, which depended on sheer bravery for an offensive to retrieve its lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine from Germany and to then capture Berlin. Russia, as usual, had a plan that was a mess. Austria-Hungary had to plan for two fronts, the the Serbs and their pan-Slavic supporters, the Russians.

Other than the funeral, nothing new emerged from the public press on the impending disaster. The editors may have decided that they had been down the road too often before. There were crises in the Balkan wars of 1912, the German Kaiser's bellicose statements, and the Germans' naval armaments program. Perhaps the editors felt this road had been trod so many times it was reasonable to expect that things would work out fine this time. 

The major news in Britain was the continuing quest for women's suffrage and  home rule for Ireland. In the latter case, Unionists on July 5 demonstrated in South London against the proposal to give Ireland some autonomy from English rule. 

Also in The Telegraph was continuing evidence of labor unrest, a phenomenon that was becoming increasingly common in the United States as well. Workers wanted better wages and working conditions, having recognized that the owners of the factories had ample profits to accommodate their demands.

Bombed building on Lexington Avenue 

In the latest incident, 4,000 engineers and skilled workers went on strike at the Royal Arsenal in Woodrich. The trigger was the installation of labor-saving machines in the carriage department. The strike soon spread to other departments, with the expectation of the walkout expanding to 8,000 workers the next day. 

In New York City, the big story was the accidental bombing of a seven-story tenement on Lexington Avenue on July 4. One of the apartments belonged to Louise Berger, an editor of Mother Earth News. Three Anarchists were storing dynamite in the apartment with the intention of using it to bomb the home of John D. Rockefeller in Tarrytown, New York. The dynamite went off prematurely, killing 11 people, including the three Anarchists. The story in The Telegraph carried the headline, "Hoisted on Their Own Petard." The Anarchists were members of the International Workers of the World, which sought to supplant capitalism with worker democracy. Berger was unharmed, having left her apartment 15 minutes earlier to go to work. A second IWW attempt to kill Rockefeller failed in 1915 when a gardener at the Rockefeller estate discovered the bomb and police defused it.

Public morals were much stricter before the war began. The Telegraph tells the tale of a court case involving a man who accosted a female on the street using the word "dear" to address her. He asserted that he was an acquaintance of hers. The woman strongly rejected that claim, but the man kept following her, insisting that they knew each other. She summoned a policeman, which led to the man being put in the dock. His defense: His poor eyesight led him to believe that they knew each other.

Missed opportunities

The United States celebrated Independence Day 1914 with fireworks, parades, picnics and speeches by dignitaries great and lesser. There was no talk about the troubles in Europe. And why should there be? 

The United States had only recently begun emerging as an imperial power. It waged war against Spain in 1898, acquiring colonies in foreign lands for the first time. President Roosevelt did send battleships and cruisers of "the Great White Fleet" sailing around the world, a pageant of American seapower. But the country was, by history and policy, an isolationist nation, content with enforcing its own hemisphere (except for brutally putting down a insurrection in the Philippines, one of colonies it had just taken from Spain).

Back in 1870, the United States cared not one whit about the Franco-Prussian War which, as it turned out, would by 1914 make both France and Germany feel the need to renew their hostilities. Germany was eager to crush France forever; France vowed to recover the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine which were lost during the 1870 war. To that end, each side laid meticulous plans to attack the other. For now, though, France kept its plans on the shelf even with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary on June 28, 1914. Germany, on the other hand, was awaiting the moment to activate theirs. Military doctrine called for being the first to attack, regardless of world opinion. German generals shuddered at the thought of being placed on the defensive.

Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph

The English public went about their business on July 4, but in Austria-Hungary and in Germany, the march to war was beginning.

That needn't have happened. Opportunities existed to avoid war but because of misjudgments and the passions of the time, none were embraced.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28 wasn't handled for what it was—a bilateral problem between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. The Austrians were furious; the assassination coincided with Serbia's National Day, and they took that at as a direct insult. They correctly believed that elements of the Serbian government promoted The Black Hand, the nationalist group of which assassin Gavrilo Princip was a member. Austria's military felt a strong response was needed. Anti-Serb riots in Vienna, Austria's capital, fueled the fire.

Serbia's premier, Nikola Pasic, apparently was not among those involved with The Black Hand. On hearing of the assassination, Premier Pasic was quoted as saying, "This is very bad. It is very bad. It will mean war."

German Kaiser Wilhelm II

The crucial mistake on the part of Austria-Hungary was its decision to consult with Kaiser Wilhelm about the situation. The Kaiser was a mercurial figure of sorts; his army was advocating war even before the assassination. Germany and Austria were partners in the Central Powers (along with Italy) but Germany was the most powerful partner. On July 5, an Austrian diplomat met with the Kaiser. Not surprisingly, the Kaiser gave Austria a blank check, saying Germany would support any action it took against Serbia, even if that meant war. 

Thus, a tired, old, grieving Emperor relied on the advice of an energetic Kaiser whose Army was itching for a fight.

In London, death of Joseph Chamberlain, long-time British politician and statesman,  dominated the news. Between 1898 and 1901, Chamberlain had tried to forge an alliance between Germany and Britain. From England's standpoint, an agreement might have dissuaded Germany from building up its Navy, the only military threat that Britain faced. Besides, the monarchs of the two countries had a familial relationship: Queen Victoria's husband, Albert, was German. And Kaiser Wilhelm was the nephew of the subsequent king, Edward. The Germans were eager for a treaty, but at each time they didn't want to appear too eager. Three times Chamberlain tried, and three times the Germans backed out. This was a major mistake on Germany's part. Had the Germany accepted a pact, there would have been no cause for The Great War.

These were just the first missed opportunities to avoid war. There would be more to come.

England is warned but instead jokes about American swimwear

Very little of London's news coverage of July 3, 1914, involved the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, an act that triggered “The Great War”—World War One—which would begin in one month. Granted, the news was being written from the British perspective. But it is instructive that so few people in the country recognized the imminence of a war that would change their lives and that of the world forever.

The top story in The Telegraph that day was about hail damage from a storm that ended a prolonged heat wave. On the previous day, page 12 told of the “breezy and fresh” magazine article on the threat of a German submarine attack on Britain “even though that enemy is not actually a very powerful one.”

The reviewer called the article "dangerous but interesting," and spoke to British naval officials about the article. ”We have done something to meet the dangers to our food supplies to arming some of our merchantmen, but we shall never be really secure until we have installed granaries in this country. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s article will bring this important question well to the front,” a leading Naval official was quoted as saying.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

In fact, the threat of German submarine attack was much greater than either the famed novelist or the Navy imagined. During the war, German battleships were kept at anchor while submarines sunk not only  merchant ships carrying grain but also a full range of armaments, oil, goods and supplies needed for the war effort and consumer consumption.

But, as far as the public was concerned, Doyle's comments were the exception to the rule.

Several of the newspaper’s prominent stories on July 3 involved odd news from America. These included a salacious report from the United States concerning the shooting death of a physician by his jealous wife. The wife secretly used a dictagraph to monitor her husband’s conversations with female patients whom she suspected might be involved in liaisons with the doctor.

On the same page there was news about male swimwear.

Under the headline “Ethics of the Beach. Kilts for Male Bathers,” The Telegraph noted, “Bathing costume for men is now exciting as much concern in American seaside resorts as costume for women. It is alleged that in neither case are the requirements for propriety and art completely met, and in a country where mixed bathing is universal and the ‘bathing parades’ on the sand sometimes last the entire forenoon, this question is considered important.

Swimwear for males in the 1910s

“In Newport, as I have described it in a previous despatch to The Daily Telegraph, women policemen patrol the bathing quarters and insist upon fair bathers being dressed—or undressed—decorously. The fashion for lady bathers, as set at Atlantic City recently, when a sort of modified Tango costume was introduced, is being adopted generally. Dancing on the sands and exercise with a ‘medicine ball,’ in which bathers of all ages participate, have been successfully inaugurated during the last few days.

 “At Dayton, Ohio, ‘The Welfare Director,’ as he is called, that the role being akin to a censor of public morals, has to-day ordered men bathers to wear skirts. Moreover, he has been provided skirts—a kind of kilt effect, reaching about half-way to the knee. ‘They are modern and proper,’ says he. The newspapers criticice Dayton’s example, but after an impartial preview of bathing fashions recently popular here there seems some reason for men to wear skirts as women have shown a tendency to discard them.”

Also in the news: continued discourse over Ireland’s demand to separate from the United Kingdom to form its own nation, or at least local autonomy, and Ulster’s demand that no such separation occur. Finally, the newspaper presented a full page of news from the Henley Royal Regatta. Selfridge’s advertised sale prices for summer suits for men.

As to the June 28 assassination of the Archduke, the newspaper provided shed light on the plot to kill the Austro-Hungarian heir apparent. The killer, Gavrilo Princip, was one of 11 members of “The Black Hand,” a criminal organization formed with the specific principal of bringing the multicultural Bosnia-Herzegovina into the Serbian orbit (an action Serbia tried again in the 1990s). The hearing further established that money to finance the group’s activities was provided by the Serbian National Party.

Martial law remained in effect in place in Sarajevo ever since the assassination of the Archduke. Before martial law took effect:

“The anger of the Moslem and Croation inhabitants [in the city] is very great, and there were several gave disturbances,” The Telegraphreported. 

The non-Serbian majority demolished a Serbian school and social club, two major hotels owned by Serbs, and 200 houses and shops belonging to Serbs. Muslim and Croat activists paraded through the streets carrying a portrait of Emperor Franz Joseph as a demonstration of their support for the empire.

Europe reacts to the assassination of the Archduke

Women in punts watch the Henley Regata in July 1914

It the start of the last month of peace that Europe would have for four years, though few realized that the coming strife actually was about to occur.

"Life was still carrying on as blithely as usual," The Telegraph of London recalled in its centennial observance of July 1, 1914, the year that war transformed the world.

The big story in England on that day was the Henley Royal Regatta, the annual rowing event that has been held since 1839 on the River Thames in the town of Henley-on-Thames. The event merited a full-page preview in The Telegraph.

But the focus on the light-hearted didn't mean that Britain, or the rest of Europe, was ignoring the tragedy that occurred three days earlier in Sarajevo. Heads of state and legislative bodies, including the King and both houses of Britain's Parliament, expressed their condolences to the royal family of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph on the assassination of his nephew and heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by a Serbian nationalist on June 28.

The assassin, Garvilo Princip, appeared in a Sarajevo court, where he confessed to his role in the shooting. He explained that he wanted to avenge what he saw was the oppression of the Serb minority in Sarajevo, the capital of the province of Bosnia-Hercegovina, which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The character of Princip's crime was recognized everywhere as a departure from the assassinations of six heads of state over the previous 20 years. They were President Carnot of France in 1894, Premier Canovas of Spain in 1897, Empress Elizabeth of Austria in 1898, King Humbert of Italy in 1900, President McKinley of the United States in 1901 and another Spanish premier, Canalejas, in 1912.

Each of these killers was an anarchist, a believer in the vision of a stateless society, with no government, without law and without ownership of property. The theory was that with no oppression, humanity would be free to act on its own, for its own good, unfettered by authority.

By contrast, Princip's act was purely political in nature. He didn't want to overthrow all government; he wanted to substitute Austrian rule with Serbian rule. The Telegraph's correspondent in the Balkans recognized this immediately: "There are circumstances connected with the crime which appear to prove that it was, if possible, a more atrocious and heartless piece of work than any of those murderous attempts we usually associate with Anarchical efforts." The correspondent left it at that; speculating as to what might happen next was to awful to contemplate.

German's Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)

The Balkans had been a tinderbox for decades, even centuries. If the great European war were to take place, German Chancellor Bismarck once remarked, it would "come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans."

The most recent strife, the Balkan War of 1912, was contained only through the unusual cooperation of five of Europe's Great Powers: Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. One of the Great Powers' creations, the Kingdom of Albania, remained a spark waiting to catch fire.

In the spring of 1914, the new kingdom was trying to fuse its many clans into a single new political structure. Albania was, and is, a Muslim outpost in Europe. Some of Albania's neighbors, particularly Greece, was not happy with the new arrangement. Earlier in the year, a separatist group of ethnic Greeks called the Epirotes declared their own independent state, "Autonomous Epirus," and guerrilla war broke out.

Europe was staggered by the rawness of the violence. On May 7, The Telegraph reported:

"An official telegram from Durazzo [modern-day Durrës, Albania's second largest city] brings news which will be received with indignation throughout the civilized world. According to a message received today by the Albanian Government, 200 Mohammedan Albanians were taken prisoner by the Epirotes and dragged to the village of Kondra. There they were taken into an Orthodox church and all 200 were crucified alive and the church then set on fire. Two days after the carnage, Albanian gendarmes occupied Kondra where they found the corpses."

The Archduke greets Sarajevans on June 28, 1914

The atrocities against the Albanians were insufficient to bring Europe to war. All sides were appalled. No side could claim justification for the horror.

But within eight weeks, another tragedy occurred that could set Europe alight. This time, Bismarck's prophecy would come true.

The War to End All Wars

One hundred years ago, the driver of a car carrying a visiting dignitary took a wrong turn. The error set in motion a chain of events that resulted in changes that affect us this day.

That one mistake left 7 million people dead. It led to the collapse of European monarchies. It instigated the rise of communism and Nazism. It permitted strife to continue to recent times in parts of Europe and the Middle East. Today's collapse in Iraq—that's one consequence of what happened on June 28, 1914.

The wrong turn gave Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, an opportunity to assassinate Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, who were riding in that car. One month later, armies throughout Europe massed for battle in what was then known as "The Great War."

Two decades later, The Great War was renamed World War One, as an even deadlier conflict began. World War Two killed even more people—more than any war in human history.

Consider what World War One brought:

• The Romanov dynasty, an empire slowly falling into decay, collapsed in an instant. The Romanovs were inept at waging war. Their soldiers and sailors were deserting. Filling the void was a revolutionary movement, the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin. The Soviet Union was created and, over the course of a few decades, it industrialized, militarized and became powerful enough to be able to threaten the world in nuclear Armageddon.
• The punitive terms imposed on Germany by the victorious Allied Powers created economic suffering for the German people and a belief that they had been "stabbed in the back" by their own democratic Weimar government, which had to sign the dictates. Capitalizing on these injuries, a failed painter named Adolf Hitler gained a following, took power, created a war machine, invaded its neighbors and ordered a holocaust that killed more than 7 million civilians.
• Japan, an ally in the conflict but ignored in the postwar Versailles negotiations, decided it needed to adopt a go-it-alone policy. Japan became more militaristic. It conquered Korea, Manchuria and much of the rest of China, plus Indochina and the Philippines. Without The Great War, there would be no need for Pearl Harbor and no need for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• New national boundaries were delineated after the war. In many cases, they ignored traditional ethnic, cultural and religious lines. The diplomats were sometimes clueless as to the desires of the local populace. They gave more credence to their own colonial interests. The postwar Versailles conference in 1919 gave the world Yugoslavia, a futile amalgamation of Balkan peoples. After decades of keeping the lid on the pot, the country finally blew up in the 1990s. Wars and ethnic cleansing occurred in Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia. Other postwar agreements created Iraq and the British Mandate of Palestine. As with Yugoslavia, different religious and cultural groups were thrown together in the expectation that their peoples could live together harmoniously.
• The United States' entry into the war in 1917 meant the end to American isolation from European affairs. From then on, the distance between the Atlantic shores grew smaller and smaller. At the outset of American involvement, President Wilson vowed that The Great War would be "the War to End All Wars." By the end of the war, his idealism was challenged here and abroad.

World War One resolved no important issues. It allowed woulds to fester and new issues to develop. It made inevitable a second global war. Fifty million to 80 million people died in World War Two through combat, bombing, ethnic cleansing, execution, starvation and disease. Roughly 3 percent to 4 percent of the world's people lost their lives.

Of course, a world absent The Great War would have continued to struggle with the tensions of nationalism, industrialization and democratization. But those struggles might have been addressed regionally or bilaterally, without a global war. Indeed, there was the belief by many in Europe that economic interrelationships made war impossible.

Archduke and his wife minutes before the shooting

The belief in accommodation and gradual change ended on that morning of June 28, 1914. A Serbian nationalist, whose name is obscure to all but historians, tried to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand with a grenade. He failed. An Austrian general directed the archduke's six-car procession to change its route, but he did not inform the driver of the archduke's car. The driver headed along the wrong route. Realizing his mistake, he back out of a street to resume the procession. That brief delay gave Gavrilo Princip, the Serb nationalist, the opportunity to pull out his gun and shoot the archduke and his wife, both of whom died almost immediately.

The tragedy occurred in Sarajevo, the Bosnian city that was nearly shelled into oblivion by Serbia during the 1990s, during one of the seemingly endless string of Balkan wars.

Gavrilo Princip, Serbian nationalist

Princip was a member of the Black Hand, a secretive group formed by the Serbian Army in 1911 to seek unification of all territories with Slavic populations not ruled by the Serbian government. One of those territories was Bosnia, which had recently been annexed by the Hapsburg rulers of Austria-Hungary.

The Austro-Hungarian Emperor, Franz Josef, grieved for the loss of his nephew, the presumptive heir to the Hapsburg throne. German Kaiser Wilhelm II, a friend of the murdered archduke, felt the tragedy needed to be avenged. Germany encouraged Austria to stand against Serbia. Russia, the Serbs' protector, threatened war against Austria if that happened. Germany promised to support Austria against the Russians. The French, who had a mutual defense treaty with the Russians, warned Austria and Germany against moving against Russia. Germany in turned warned France it would fight. Britain had an understanding with France; it would cooperate with France if German troops entered French soil through Belgium.

When Serbia ignored the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum one month later, the dominoes began falling. By early August, the Central Powers—Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire—were at war with the Allied Powers—France, Russia and Britain. Soon, the Ottoman Empire joined the fight on Germany's side, a crucial mistake that ensured the dismemberment of Ottoman territories even while the fighting continued.

Over the next few weeks, I'll recount some of the events that occurred in the lead-up to the war. But if you're so inclined, I suggest you get a copy of Barbara Tuchman's epic, "The Guns of August," which details the history behind the war and the early days of the conflagration. My copy is battered from having read it again and again since the 1990s. Subsequent research counter bits of Tuchman's work. But hers remains the masterpiece. The book has been reprinted several times since its original 1962 publication. If you can find one at your bookstore or library, it's worth your while to read it. Its tales of hubris, miscalculation, nationalism and vanity remind us of the continued failings of government and its citizens. Though written 50 years ago, the story reminds one of the events surrounding Iraq in 2003.