is a task
which requires, even at this time of crisis, when, by the common sentiment
of her citizens, the real nature and purpose of the Commonwealth have
become clear to us, the active thoughts of all political students. For to
bring home to all within her borders who bear rule and responsibility, from
the village headman in India and Nigeria, the Basutu chief and the
South Sea potentate, to the public opinion of Great Britain and the
self-governing Dominions, the nature of the British Commonwealth, and the
character of its citizenship and ideals, and to study how those ideals
may be better expressed in its working institutions and executive
government--that is a task to which the present crisis beckons the minds
of British citizens, a task which Britain owes not only to herself but to
mankind.

_Note_.--A friendly critic who saw this chapter in MS. remarked: "I think
the author has been very successful in ignoring some of the shady methods
by which the British Empire has been extended." The criticism is not
strictly relevant to the subject of the chapter, but as it may occur to
other readers it may be well to deal with it in a brief note. I would
answer:

(1) The "shady methods" of which he speaks were not the result of British
Imperialism, or of a desire for conquest on the part of the British
State. They were the result, melancholy but inevitable, of the contact of
individuals and races at different levels of development. This contact
between the stronger and the weaker (which can be illustrated from what is
said about the sandalwood traders in the New Hebrides on p. 215 above) was
the direct result of the explorations of the sixteenth century, which threw
the seas of the world open to Western pioneers and traders. The extension
of the authority of Western _governments_ (Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch,
French, and British), and the collisions between them, followed inevitably
on the activities of their citizens, as has been pointed out on p. 216
above. All the Western governments have made mistakes in dealing with this
unfamiliar situation; but the wise course for democratic public opinion,
instead of railing at "Imperialism," would seem to be to familiarise itself
with its problems and control its injurious tendencies.

(2) In any case, the mistakes of the past do not entitle us to wash our
hands of responsibilities in the present. This war has shown that the
non-self-governing parts of the Commonwealth are not, as o