e 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