On Monday, July 6, William’s "lumbago" having yielded to treatment, there was sprung one of the most dramatic of all the _coups_ which preceded the fructification of the German War Party’s now fast-completing conspiracy. Although martial law was being ruthlessly enforced in Bosnia and Herzegovina and all Austria-Hungary was in a state of rising ferment over the "expiation" which public opinion insisted "the Serbian murderers" must render, the Kaiser’s mind was made up for him that the international situation was sufficiently placid for him to start on his annual holiday cruise to the North Cape. Four days previous, July 2, though the world was not to know it till many weeks afterward, the military governor of German Southwest Africa unexpectedly informed a number of German officers in the colony that they might go home on special leave if they could catch the outgoing steamer. These officers reached Germany during the first week in August, to find orders awaiting them to join their regiments in the field. Notifications issued to Austrian subjects in distant countries were subsequently found also to bear date of July 2. Things were moving. The _Hohenzollern_ steamed away to the fjords of Norway with the Kaiser and his customary company of congenial spirits. The Government-controlled _Lokal-Anzeiger_ and other journalistic handmaids of officialdom forthwith proclaimed that "with his old-time tact our Emperor, by pursuing the even tenor of his way, gives us and the world this gratifying and convincing sign that however menacing the storm-clouds in the Southeast may seem, _lieb’ Vaterland mag ruhig sein_. All is well with Germany." Or words to that effect. Germany and Europe were thus effectually lulled into a false sense of security, for, as one read further in other "inspired" German newspapers, "our patriotic Emperor is not the man to withdraw his hand from the helm of State if peril were in the air." So off went the Kaiser to his beloved Bergen, Trondhjem and Tromsö to flatter the Norwegians as he had done for twenty summers previous and to shake hands with the tourists who always "booked" cabins in the Hamburg-American North Cape steamers in anticipation of the distinction the Kaiser never failed to bestow upon Herr Ballin’s patrons.