INTERNATIONAL: World Warriors

The two pistol shots that started the World War were fired on St. Vitus Day. When that day came round last week harassed King Alexander of Jugoslavia had harder work than ever to keep his subjects from celebrating with high glee the double murder that freed so many of them from Imperial Austria.

On the 20th anniversary of the Sarajevo murders the World Press was full of solemn editorials but in Sarajevo survivors of the plot took their ease in the snug cafe of Papa Semiz on King Peter’s Street.

Three youths prepared for the crime at one of Papa Semiz’ beer-stained tables. Being minors, they could not receive the death sentence, but all three were cast into damp Austrian dungeons where they died in a few years of consumption. Papa Semiz, however, has lived on and so have some of the three youths’ accomplices, notably Victor Rupchich, a newspaper editor who was back in the cafe at the fatal hour last week for a glass of scorching slivovitz.

“I remember it all as if it happened yesterday,” said Papa Semiz. “It was there in that corner, just against the window, that Gavrilo Princip sat just 20 years ago while he waited for my clock to strike the hour.

“He sat there quite alone over his coffee. The streets were crowded outside. Cheers told us of the coming of Franz Ferdinand. Princip got up calmly and paid his bill and walked out. Fifteen minutes later people rushed in and told me that Princip had stood calmly against the barber shop on the corner and fired two shots.”

“I stood with Princip!” cut in Editor Rupchich proudly. “The first shot killed the Archduke and the second killed his wife Sophie as she flung herself over him. Then I remember that Count Harrock of Austria rushed upon my poor friend Princip and split his shoulder to the bone with one blow of a sabre. Horrible!”

While the slivovitz circulated last week Papa Semiz philosophized. “That was the beginning and the end of the War for us in Sarajevo. No more shots were fired here. Men were conscripted to fight for the Austrians and they came home to find themselves Jugoslavs. So much the better! I never thought that that young student Princip sipping his coffee in my café would throw Kings and Emperors and Sultans off their thrones and upset the World by two pistol shots.”

Over the barber shop, on the wall against which Student Princip leaned, his fellow townsmen of Sarajevo have erected a handsome plaque: “ON THIS HISTORIC SPOT GAVRILO PRINCIP HERALDED THE ADVENT OF LIBERTY ON ST. VITUS DAY, JUNE 28TH 1914.” In the cemetery outside the town is a tablet to “THE HEROES OF ST. VITUS DAY,” Shooter Princip, Nedielko Cabrinovic, whose clumsily thrown bomb glanced harmlessly off Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s shoulder earlier in the day, and Trifko Grabez who helped Princip and Cabrinovic get their weapons from Serbia.

Quietly, 80 miles south of Sarajevo, live Hero Princip’s honored parents, simple peasants. Though proud of him and unremitting in their prayers for the safety of his soul, they are proud too of his brother, the Hon. Jovan Princip, today a Member of the Jugoslav Chamber of Deputies.

While all was well with the Princips on St. Vitus Day the World burgeoned ominously last week with events far from peaceful:

London played lavish host to the brisk, bandy-legged engineer of the French war machine, terse, terrier-like General Maxime Weygand.

He was received by King George. He entertained British War Secretary Viscount Hailsham at the French Embassy. He worked daily with the chiefs of the British fighting service staffs. The consultation was understood to be about whether the safety of Great Britain, in the event of another war, demands establishment of a “forward defensive zone.” States men dare not let it be rumored that they have talked of such things but the generals in London last week seemed not to care if the whole world knew they were discussing possible occupation by British troops of the lowlands of Belgium and Holland should France and Germany again become embroiled. After a week of such military fraternizing General Max flew home to Paris escorted by a whole squadron of British combat planes.

Three days later British Secretary for War Viscount Hailsham crossed the Channel with 40 British staff officers including General Sir Archibald Armar Montgomery-Massingberd. Chief of the Imperial Gen eral Staff, and set out from Paris as guests of the French General Staff for a four-day tour of the Franco-Belgian frontier and Wartime battlefields.

Fortnight ago Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald announced the imminence of huge additions to His Majesty’s Navy (TIME, July 2). Last week Air Secretary the Marquess of Londonderry told the House of Commons that Britain must double her air force.

In London it seemed like 1913 again when a great war scare stench was uncorked by Henry Wickham Steed, onetime editor of the London Times. He claimed to have obtained from Berlin official documents showing that for years successive German Governments have had secret agents in London and Paris preparing surveys for bomb, gas and germ raids. According to Mr. Steed, whose acumen and veracity stand high among his countrymen, harmless germ cultures have lately been released in London and Paris subways and the spread of the germs recorded by German agents. Last week the Nazi press bureau retorted: “There are other reasons for the stench in those subways!”

Paris seconded the “big navy” drive of the British Admiralty as the French Naval Ministry told correspondents that Italy’s recent appropriations for two battleships of 35,000 tons each in answer to the 26,500-ton battleship laid down by France will necessitate still greater French naval building.

Berlin seethed with Nazi bloodshed but on St. Vitus Day all German flags went to half mast. Quietly at Wilhelmshaven the third of Germany’s famed 10,000-ton “pocket battleships,” the Admiral Graf von Spee, with six nin. guns, was launched and hailed by the Fatherland’s Press as “unmatched in battle power for her size.” Chancellor Hitler, just before the Nazi revolt broke, inspected the great Krupp works at Esse—n. Instead of passing this off as a trivial event. Publisher Hitler’s personal news-organ covered its entire front page with militant pictures from Essen showing the Chancellor promenading with Master Armorer Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.

Moscow fired all the big guns of Bolshevik publicity on the 20th anniversary of Gavrilo Princip’s deed. According to the official Soviet Press: “If the last war resulted in one great Union of Soviet Republics, how certain is the next war to bring the World Revolution of the World Proletariat!”

Bucharest watched French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou zipping purposefully around the powder house of Europe —the Balkans.

Istanbul led other capitals with a new stamp depicting an event in the next war. An enemy air fleet is shown attacking a Turkish factory located on a mountain top. A Turkish plane dives valiantly to crash the enemy. By order of Dictator Mustafa Kemal Pasha 100,000 of these war scare stamps have been printed as a first series and will be sold “to build up Turkey’s air defense.”