The Expansion Of Europe | Page 4

are deeply affected by the problems of
world-politics and by the imperial expansion and the imperial rivalries
of the greater states of Western civilisation. But when men who have
given no special attention to the history of these questions try to form a

sound judgment on them, they find themselves handicapped by the lack
of any brief and clear resume of the subject. I have tried, in this book,
to provide such a summary, in the form of a broad survey,
unencumbered with detail, but becoming fuller as it comes nearer to
our own time. That is my first purpose. In fulfilling it I have had to
cover much well- trodden ground. But I hope I have avoided the aridity
of a mere compendium of facts.
My second purpose is rather more ambitious. In the course of my
narrative I have tried to deal with ideas rather than with mere facts. I
have tried to bring out the political ideas which are implicit in, or which
result from, the conquest of the world by Western civilisation; and to
show how the ideas of the West have affected the outer world, how far
they have been modified to meet its needs, and how they have
developed in the process. In particular I have endeavoured to direct
attention to the significant new political form which we have seen
coming into existence, and of which the British Empire is the oldest
and the most highly developed example--the world-state, embracing
peoples of many different types, with a Western nation-state as its
nucleus. The study of this new form seems to me to be a neglected
branch of political science, and one of vital importance. Whether or not
it is to be a lasting form, time alone will show. Finally I have tried to
display, in this long imperialist conflict, the strife of two rival
conceptions of empire: the old, sterile, and ugly conception which
thinks of empire as mere domination, ruthlessly pursued for the sole
advantage of the master, and which seems to me to be most fully
exemplified by Germany; and the nobler conception which regards
empire as a trusteeship, and which is to be seen gradually emerging and
struggling towards victory over the more brutal view, more clearly and
in more varied forms in the story of the British Empire than in perhaps
any other part of human history. That is why I have given a perhaps
disproportionate attention to the British Empire. The war is determining,
among other great issues, which of these conceptions is to dominate the
future.
In its first form this book was completed in the autumn of 1916; and it
contained, as I am bound to confess, some rather acidulated sentences
in the passages which deal with the attitude of America towards
European problems. These sentences were due to the deep

disappointment which most Englishmen and most Frenchmen felt with
the attitude of aloofness which America seemed to have adopted
towards the greatest struggle for freedom and justice ever waged in
history. It was an indescribable satisfaction to be forced by events to
recognise that I was wrong, and that these passages of my book ought
not to have been written as I wrote them. There is a sort of solemn joy
in feeling that America, France, and Britain, the three nations which
have contributed more than all the rest of the world put together to the
establishment of liberty and justice on the earth, are now comrades in
arms, fighting a supreme battle for these great causes. May this
comradeship never be broken. May it bring about such a decision of the
present conflict as will open a new era in the history of the world--a
world now unified, as never before, by the final victory of Western
civilisation which it is the purpose of this book to describe.
Besides rewriting and expanding the passages on America, I have
seized the opportunity of this new issue to alter and enlarge certain
other sections of the book, notably the chapter on the vital period
1878-1900, which was too slightly dealt with in the original edition. In
this work, which has considerably increased the size of the book, I have
been much assisted by the criticisms and suggestions of some of my
reviewers, whom I wish to thank.
Perhaps I ought to add that though this book is complete in itself, it is
also a sort of sequel to a little book entitled Nationalism and
Internationalism, and was originally designed to be printed along with
it: that is the explanation of sundry footnote references. The two
volumes are to be followed by a third, on National Self-government,
and it is my hope that the complete series may form a useful general
survey of the development of the main political factors