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Continental Empire in which the German Princes, his sons, should
occupy the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia, the heir of the House
of Austria to rule as king or grand duke of Austria with possibly
another German ruled kingdom touching the sea on the south.

There are some who believe that when the Kaiser, accompanied by
von Tirpitz, visited Franz Ferdinand at Konopisht in June, 1914,
before the Kiel week, that a great conspiracy was entered into,
in which it was arranged that a great Central Empire should be
created with one of the sons of the Duchess of Hohenberg on the
throne of Bohemia and the other provided for by some newly carved
out kingdom made from Bosnia, or a portion of Serbia. And it may
have been part of this plot that Eitel Fritz and other sons of
the Kaiser should be provided with thrones derived from Balkan
territory.

It will be remembered that as Franz Ferdinand and his wife fell
under the assassin's bullet at Sarajevo he called out: "Sophie,
live for our children!" His devotion to his wife and to their
children was extraordinary. He was continually sparing from his
income so that on his death his sons would have a large sum of
money, saved from the income of estates which they could not
inherit.

It is hard to believe that such a crime against the House of
Hapsburg and against his own country was contemplated from the
inside of royalty. But one event seems a confirmation of this
theory. The dead Franz Ferdinand and his wife were buried with
such lack of honour, almost with such contempt, as to lead to the
belief that the head of the House of Hapsburg, Emperor Francis
Joseph himself, without whose directions the Chamberlain, Count
Montenuovo, would not have dared to act, discovered his heir in
some act against the laws or fortunes of the Imperial House.

For the funeral arrangements were such, that the Austrian and
Hungarian aristocracy were moved to protest and as a result a
belated order was issued directing that the troops of the Vienna
Garrison should take part in the funeral ceremonies. About one
hundred and fifty members of the leading families of Hungary and
Austria, without invitation, entered the funeral procession and
followed the bodies to the railway station. The _London Times_
correspondent called attention to this in cables to his newspaper
at the time.

Personally, I do not incline to this view, but I do believe that
at Konopisht the war of 1914 was finally agreed on. Too many