Chapter 33 Portents of War

"What do you mean?" I inquire, voice trembling slightly for fear of the extreme reactions of the Berkeley men. "Surely the assassination of one man, however awful for the family and the country, ought not to result in a war on the scale you expect." "If all persons on Earth were rational, I could agree with you," Wesley replies wearily. "But such is not the case. The Archduke was the heir to the throne of the Austrian Empire. Understandably, the Austrians are extremely upset. My sources in Austria say that they are demanding restitution from the Serbian government. The Serbs, meanwhile, claim that the perpetrator of this crime is a member of an extremist fringe group and has nothing to do with the Serbian government, and thus they view the Austrian demands for restitution from the Serbian government as nothing less than ridiculous." "The rest should be easy enough, from our studies," Dmitri adds. "You know how closely allied