The fact that there was a time limit created a situation of the utmost gravity. crime, and on July 23 sent an ultimatum to Belgrade, demanding a satisfactory answer in forty-eight hours. Austria Hun- gary blamed the Serbian Government for the. That crime, however, was the torch which ignited the powder barrel. There is evidence that war would have come upon some pretext or other, even if there had been no assassination at Sarajevo. They are to be found in the growth of militarism in Germany, in the ,worship of armaments, and in the teachings of certain German professors and writers.
Doubtless the real causes of the catastrophe lie deeper and go farther back in points of time. I When the heir to the Austrian throne, the Archduke Ferdinand, and his wife, the Duchess of Holienberg, were assassinated at Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, on Sunday, June 28, nobody thought that the greatest war in the history of the world would be the result. His- torians will say of 1914 that it was the testing time of the British Empire, when the reality and strength of the ties which bind every part of our far-flung dominions* in love and loyalty to the Motherland and the Crown were proved to the world. The hour of our need was the hour of their opportunity, and magnifi- cently they availed themselves of it. sea began to pour out their wealth in gold and fighting men. India, Canada, Australia, Africa and the islands of the. Then from every corner of the Empire there came splendid and spon- taneous offers of assistance. With the bursting of the war cloud over Europe the nation sprang to arms in a just can.se for its own honour and in defence of the outraged liberties of the little nations.
What its results may bo no man can say, but im- portant and far-reaching effects upon the destinies of men and nations it must liavr- effects which will extend even "to the last syllable of recorded time." For the British Empire it has already had important re- sults. This awful cataclysm has dwarfed the other happenings of the year and made them appear trivial and of small account. REVIEW OF THE YEAR e The year just closing will be for evei memorable for the terrible catastrophe of war-the greatesb war in the history of the -world, a war which has involved empires, kingdoms, and states representing in the aggregate more than half the area and more than half the population of the globe.
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