SERAJEVO ASSASSINATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20602, 28 June 1930, Page 14

SERAJEVO ASSASSINATION.

THE SIXTEENTH ANNIVERSARY To-day is the sixteenth anniversary of the assassination at Serajevo of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife. This was the first of the sequenco of events which led to the outbreak of the Great War. The assassination was planned and executed by a band of Bosnian youths, Serbs ar.d Croats, with the assistance of a secret military organisation called "The Union of Death." Gabriel Princip, the assassin of Ferdinand, is described_ by historians as an idealist and a patriot; he was a weak neurotic, yet a daring bravo. One of his friends, named Chalrinovitch, one day in 1914, showed' him a postcard announcing the proposed visit to Bosnia of the Archduke, and this was accepted by Princip and his associates as an opportunity to kill Ferdinand. Six young plotters were placed along the route of the Archduke's procession on June 28, and as the car backed slowly around, Princip leapt forward and shot Ferdinand in tlie neck. He then turned his pistol on General Potiorek, who was in the same car, but his arm was jerked up, and the next shot hit the Archduke's wife, the Duchess Sophia. Both died in a few minutes. Twenty-fivo persons—all Bosnians—were implicated and tried for the plot. Of them 16 were sentenced and nine acquitted. ' Hitch Chubrilovilch and Javanoviitch were executed, but Princip, with two others, were too_ young for the death penalty, and were imprisoned. All 1 three died in prison from consumption before the war ended.