CAUSED WORLD WAR

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 886, 1 February 1930, Page 11

CAUSED WORLD WAR

i MEMORIAL TO SLAYER OF ARCHDUKE STUDENT IMMORTALISED - Times Cable. Reed. 10.15 a.m. LONDON, Friday. The London “Times” correspondent at Belgrade states that a memorial tablet to the student Gabriel Prineip, whose murder of the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand, in June, 1914, led up to the World War, is being unveiled at Serajevo on February 2, on the spot where the Archduke was killed. The Yugoslav Government states that as the tablet is being privately erected by Princip’s family and friends, they cannot interfere, but no authorities or associations will be represented at the unveiling, and speeches will not be allowed. The murder of the Grand Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in 1914, the event, which was the spark to the smouldering embers of world unrest, was planned and executed by a band of Bosnian youths, Serbs and Croats, with the assistance of a secret, military organisation called “The Union of Death.” Gabriel Prineip, 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 Chalrinovitcli, one day in 1914, showed him a postcard announcing the proposed visit to Bosnia of the Archduke, and this was accepted by Prineip and his associates as an opportunity to kill Ferdinand. Six young plotters were placed along the route of the Archduke’s procession on July 28, and as the car backed slowly around, Prineip leapt forward and shot Ferdinand in the neck. Tie 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-five persons—all Bosnians, —were implicated and tried for the plot, and of them 16 were sentenced and 9 acquitted. Hitch Chubrilovitch and Javanovitch were executed, but Prineip, with two others, were too young for the death penalty, and were imprisoned. All three died there of consumption before the war ended.