one set of the belligerents would be attained. But how would it render future wars impossible and lay the foundations for a League of Peace when the real roots of the war would be left untouched? Those roots are the Imperialist rivalries of modern capitalist States, and no amount of jugglery and tampering with the map of Europe on the principle of nationalities would remove them. Let a still Greater Russia be created with the help of Posen and Galicia and Bukowina and Constantinople and Northern Persia; let France be aggrandised by the addition of Alsace-Lorraine and the left bank of the Rhine; let Italy obtain mastery of the entire Adriatic Sea with a good slice of Asia Minor thrown into the bargain; let also a vast Yugo-Slav State be created across the Balkans and further north on the ruins of Austria and Hungary; let also a new Czecho-Slovak State be created as an advance post of Russia in Central Europe; let all these and many other such alterations be made in the European map in obedience to the principle of nationality—and tomorrow we again have the old Imperialist rivalries, the old financial and colonial aspirations, the old militarist lust for power, all leading up to a new cataclysm.
And so we come to the conclusion that the ostensible war-aims of the Allies, as outlined in the Note to America, stand in no relation to the real causes of the war and would, if realised, leave things exactly in the same position as they were before. The truth, of course, is, Capitalism in its present imperial phase is a fruitful source of wars, which can only be stopped up by the overthrow of Capitalism itself.
THE PROFITEERS OF WAR
It was a universal belief before the outbreak of the present calamity that the "future war" would not and could not, for economic reasons, be of long duration. Referring to the experience of the Russo-Japanese War, in which frontal attacks only led to withdrawals on the part of the defeated opponent, without bringing about any decision, Count von Schlieffen, the famous successor of Moltke in the German General Staff and one of the greatest theorists of war in our time, said: "In such cases the campaign is dragging along. But wars
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