Excerpt from History of the World War: With Chronology of Important Events

When, to the world peoples, the news was flashed of the Austrian tragedy of June. 28, 1914, there came no Warning that it was of dread import. The nations journeyed almost to the brink of war in ignorance of its nearness. In America especially, if, a week later, one thought of the fateful assassination at all, it was only as the latest of a long series of such happenings in an unhappy empire. In Europe, men made their usual commercial, political, personal plans for August and September, with no intimation that these plans would never be realized. Each nation had its prob lems at home and its differences abroad, but the settle ment of these problems did not call for the slaughter of the youth of the land. Europe was armed, but Europe had always been armed; there had been threats of war, just as there had always been threats, or worse. But in the last generation a strong sentiment for peace had spread. The more democratic nations had come to think of war between the great powers as a thing of the past. So it was that when every newspaper in the world carried the black news that the long threatened European war had begun and that nation after na tion was being hurled headlong into the conflict, the wide world gasped in utter surprise at the bare fact of it. The immensity of it dazed the nations; the wantonness of it angered them. A great outcry arose against war and against autocratic power that could, without warning, convulse civilization.

A sword had hung over Europe for years before this, but it had dropped without causing a general con flict. It was not noticed that the sword had been hung up again. This sword was the Balkan question. For a generation it had been an axiom that the Bal kan states would one day be the cause of a general European war. The date of this war had been fore cast many times but each year saw the war clouds dissipate. To the world the Balkan states meant, not races of people, not personalities, but a problem that endangered the peace of western civilization. Their national aspirations were unheeded or used but as pawns of empire. Oppressed by Turkey, they were suppressed by European diplomats in the interests of their own safety.

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