While the British fleet was unfolding itself before our King, there was no gaiety amongst the high government officials in Belgrade. They were getting very anxious. The Council of Ministers in Vienna was inquiring closely into the part played by them in the Sarajevo murders. It was rumoured that the Austrians had traced the arms and explosives with which the murderers were provided to certain Servian officers and officials of the government who were members of a National Union for making Slav power supreme in the Balkan Peninsula. It was also said that these same officers and officials had secretly passed the murderers into Bosnia, and had helped them in various other ways to do their deadly work. If Austria could prove all this, she would be able to say that Servia had been playing the part of a secret enemy, and rightly deserved punishment of some sort. [Illustration: The King and Crown Prince of Servia. _Photo, Topical._] On the evening of the 23rd of July the Austro-Hungarian ministers in Belgrade handed the Note to which your father referred when he read his newspaper at the breakfast table. You know that every European country sends officials to live in the capitals of other countries, and that these officials represent the powers by which they are sent. They are always treated with the greatest possible respect, and their houses are supposed to be bits of their own land planted down in a foreign country. Sometimes these representatives are called ambassadors, sometimes simply ministers. When the government of one country wishes to communicate with the government of another country, it sends and receives messages through its ambassadors or ministers. In Belgrade there was, of course, an Austrian minister, and it was he who handed the Note to the Servian Prime Minister. This Note was of such grave importance that I must tell you what was in it. First, it began by telling Servia that for a long time past she had been stirring up her people against Austria; that she had allowed men connected with the government to plot against her; and that she had taken no steps to punish those who had assisted the murderers at Sarajevo. The Servians were greatly to blame, and upon them must fall much of the responsibility for the wicked deeds that had been done in Bosnia.