There was also a feeling that the moral effects of military action would breathe new life into the exhausted structures of the Habsburg monarchy, restoring it to the vigour and virility of an imagined past, and that Serbia must be dealt with before it became too powerful to defeat militarily.[29] The principal voices for peace in previous years included Franz Ferdinand himself. His removal not only provided the casus belli but removed one of the most prominent doves from policymaking.