The Final Summer

As Europe drifted toward war in July 1914, most French people remained absorbed in daily concerns. The sensational Caillaux trial—where the Finance Minister's wife shot a newspaper editor—dominated headlines. Parisians planned August vacations to newly fashionable beach resorts. Farmers prepared for harvest, the most crucial time in their annual cycle.

Yet signs of impending catastrophe accumulated. Banks reported unusual gold withdrawals. Military leaves were quietly cancelled. Railway officials received sealed orders to be opened only on mobilization. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28 had seemed merely another Balkan crisis until Austria's ultimatum to Serbia on July 23 suddenly made war possible, then probable, then inevitable.

On July 31, church bells across France rang the tocsin—the ancient signal of danger. In Paris, crowds gathered outside newspaper offices seeking updates. That evening, at 9:40 PM, Jean Jaurès fell to an assassin's bullet at the Café du Croissant, killed by a nationalist fanatic who believed the socialist leader's pacifism threatened France.

Émilie Carles, a young teacher in the Alps, recorded: "The church bells rang and rang. Women wept in the streets. Men stood silent, knowing what must come. The war to end wars, they would later call it. We who lived through it knew better—it was the war that ended our world."