Day's off to a good start!  I love finding OPEN signs.

  Getting to that part of pre-WWI history where authors snapshot tensions and with the distance of time, do commentary and analysis.

  Perry's work tells, it was turning into an age of division in which the supernatural effect of sentiment fueled such pitted-againsts as:

--brutal and dangerous v romantic illusion

--awareness of reality v mythic power

--appeal v disgust

  Perry points out volatile conditions, enmeshings, and hairpin turns of events.

  Apparently it was a young person enmeshed in terrorism activity who murdered the Archduke.  SIX WEEKS LATER, " the armies of Europe were on the march" (475).

  Austria-Hungary was in a vice grip what with nationalism being " the most powerful spiritual force of the age" (475) and that country having many nationalities "each with its own history and traditions and often conflicting aspirations" (Perry, Western Civ, 475).