ABSTRACT
Professor A. E. Zimmern, writing before the League of Nations was created, drew a useful distinction between two accusations often brought against the pre-war world. The dissolution of Austria-Hungary in the event of a great European war had long been a commonplace of political prophecy. The predominance assigned by Sir Arthur Salter to the economic causes of war has long been recognised by Socialist opinion. Sir Arthur Salter has classified the causes of past wars as principally four—religious, dynastic, nationalist and economic. The formula that Capitalism is the cause of war and Socialism the only cure is too simple, without elaboration. Socialism on a purely national basis might only increase the danger. Under the Geneva Protocol none at all would have remained, except the possibility of a League war, or police war, to put down an aggressor, a possibility which exists also under the Covenant and which the Protocol, in the judgment of its supporters, would have rendered more remote.
