This board has long held that the assassination of an heir presumptive is regrettable, and we hold so again today. The murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess of Hohenberg in Sarajevo on Sunday is a tragedy. We say so without qualification, a practice we reserve for occasions of this gravity and for the weather. But the speculation now arriving by cable, that this single act will draw Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Russia, Germany, France, and Great Britain into a general war, is alarmist, and we decline to indulge it. From our vantage on an island 130 miles off the Minnesota coast, governed without incident by Queen Anaweh, we can see the situation with a clarity that those standing in it apparently cannot.

Consider the facts. The great powers are bound by a system of interlocking alliances designed so that no one of them may act alone, and it follows that none will. The monarchs of Europe are, in most cases, cousins, and some members of this board who have cousins observe that disagreements among them rarely proceed past a strained Christmas. Others maintain that a measured Austrian ultimatum, perhaps with a forty-eight-hour deadline and ten or so demands, may be exactly the firm but fair gesture that clears the air. Commerce has made war unprofitable, and this board has never known anything unprofitable to happen.

We acknowledge the dissent of one member, who argued at Tuesday's meeting that railway mobilization timetables, once begun, may prove difficult to stop. The concern has been entered into the minutes, and the member has been reassigned to the shipping column. It is our considered view that cooler heads will prevail by August, that any young men sent anywhere will be home by Christmas, and that further discussion is warranted, though not urgently.

Editor's note: This editorial first appeared on June 30, 1914, in the Gnu Weekly Intelligencer, a predecessor to this newspaper. It has been republished every June since, in accordance with the Board's policy of not revisiting prior positions. The policy was adopted in 1919 and reaffirmed in 1939, 1945, and 2003. The Board regards the matter as settled and notes that the Archduke's assassination did not, by itself and in the strictest sense, do anything.