The deeper
stream of causes depends not on individuals who, like the mass of
mankind, are carried on by a destiny which no murder has ever been able
to placate, divert, or arrest.
In July of last year I was a stranger in a strange city in the Midlands
and particularly out of touch with the world's politics. Never a very
diligent reader of newspapers, there were at that time reasons of a
private order which caused me to be even less informed than usual on
public affairs as presented from day to day in that necessarily
atmosphereless, perspectiveless manner of the daily papers, which
somehow, for a man possessed of some historic sense, robs them of all
real interest. I don't think I had looked at a daily for a month past.
But though a stranger in a strange city I was not lonely, thanks to a
friend who had travelled there out of pure kindness to bear me company in
a conjuncture which, in a most private sense, was somewhat trying.
It was this friend who, one morning at breakfast, informed me of the
murder of the Archduke Ferdinand.
The impression was mediocre. I was barely aware that such a man existed.
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