One factor alone caused the great war. It was not the assassination at Sarajevo, not the Slavic ferment of anti-Teutonism in Austria and the Balkans. The only cause of the world's greatest war was the determination of the German High Command and the powerful circle surrounding it that "Der Tag" had arrived. The assassination at Sarajevo was only the peg for the pendant of war. Another peg would have been found inevitably had not the projection of that assassination presented itself as the excuse. Germany's military machine was ready. A gray-green uniform that at a distance would fade into misty obscurity had been devised after exhaustive experiments by optical, dye and cloth experts co-operating with the military high command. These uniforms had been standardized and fitted for the millions of men enrolled in Germany's regular and reserve armies. Rifles, great pyramids of munitions, field kitchens, traveling post-offices, motor lorries, a network of military railways leading to the French and Belgian border, all these and more had been made ready. German soldiers had received instructions which enabled each man at a signal to go to an appointed place where he found everything in readiness for his long forced marches into the territory of Germany's neighbors. More than all this, Germany's spy system, the most elaborate and unscrupulous in the history of mankind, had enabled the German High Command to construct in advance of the declaration of war concrete gun emplacements in Belgium and other invaded territory. The cellars of dwellings and shops rented or owned by German spies were camouflaged concrete foundations for the great guns of Austria and Germany. These emplacements were in exactly the right position for use against the fortresses of Germany's foes. Advertisements and shop-signs were used by spies as guides for the marching German armies of invasion. [Illustration: Painting of KAISER WILLIAM II.] Copyright Press Illustrating Service. KAISER WILLIAM II OF GERMANY Posterity will regard him as more responsible than any other human being for the sacrifice of millions of lives in the great war, as a ruler who might have been beneficent and wise, but attempted to destroy the liberties of mankind and to raise on their ruins an odious despotism. To forgive him and to forget his terrible transgressions would be to condone them. [Illustration: Men marching past a band.] Copyright Underwood and Underwood, N, Y. FRANCIS JOSEPH I OF AUSTRIA, THE "OLD EMPEROR," ON A STATE OCCASION. Francis Joseph died before the war had settled the fate of the Hapsburgs. The end came on November 21, 1916, in the sixty-eighth year of his reign. His life was tragic. He lived to see his brother executed, his Queen assassinated, and his only son a suicide, with always before him the specter of the disintegration of his many-raced empire.