 After visits to Austria and Germany in 1913 Sergei Mikhailovich reported to the Government of the feverish work of military factories of the central European powers, but his warning about an imminent war was not heeded by the Russian ministers.In the summer of 1914 just before the outbreak of World War I, Grand Duke Sergei was traveling near Lake Baikal when he fell ill with rheumatic fever in Chita.At his return to Mikhailovskoe, during the first days of autumn, his illness, complicated with pleurisy took a severe form.