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. The assassination occurred at Sarajevo
in Bosnia, a dependency, or rather, a Slavic state that had been seized
by Austria. It was the lightning flash that preceeded the thunder's
mighty crash.

Much has been written of the causes which led to the tragedy. Prinzip
may have been a fanatic, but he was undoubtedly aided in his act by a
number of others. The natural inference immediately formed was that the
murder was the outcome of years of ill feeling between Serbia and
Austria-Hungary, due to the belief of the people in the smaller state,
that their aspirations as a nation were hampered and blocked by the
German element in the Austrian empire. The countries had been on the
verge of war several years before over the seizure of Bosnia and
Herzegovina by Austria, and later over the disposition of Scutari and
certain Albanian territory conquered in the Balkan-Turkish struggle.

Events are coming to light which may place a new construction on the
causes leading to the assassination at Sarajevo. It was undoubtedly the
pretext sought by Germany for starting the great war. Whether it may not
have been carefully planned to serve that object and the Serbian
Prinzip, employed as a tool to bring it about, is not so certain.

Several years prior to the war, the celebrated Russian, Tolstoy, gave
utterance to a remarkable prophecy. Tolstoy was a mystic, and it was not
unusual for him to go into a semi-trance state in which he professed to
peer far into the future and obtain visions of things beyond the ken of
average men. The Russian czar was superstitious and it is said that the
German emperor had a strong leaning towards the mystic and psychic. In
fact, it has been stated that the Kaiser's claim to a partnership with
The Almighty was the result of delusions formed in his consultations
with mediums--the modern descendants of the soothsayers of olden times.

Tolstoy stated that both the Czar and the Kaiser desired to consult with
him and test his powers of divination. The three had a memorable
sitting. Some time afterwards the results were given to the worl