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| Stop and smell the roses. |
In early June, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie went to their 500 acre estates in Bohemia. One hundred years ago this weekend, a friend came to visit to admire the remarkable rose beds. The friend was Kaiser Wilhelm and he brought another rose enthusiast with him, Grand Admiral, Alfred von Tirpitz. Heaven forbid that I encourage conspiracy theories, but I have serious trouble getting my head around Ferdinand, Willy and Alfred hunched appreciatively over rose blossoms. And I'm not alone. A Viennese newspaper of June 1914 said: "The ravishing aroma that rises out of the flower beds has suddenly taken on the smell of gunpowder."
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