ve contributed their share to the general result;
and for that reason the term 'Imperialism' is commonly employed to
describe the spirit which has led to this astonishing and
world-embracing movement of the modern age.

The terms 'Empire' and 'Imperialism' are in some respects unfortunate,
because of the suggestion of purely military dominion which they
convey; and their habitual employment has led to some unhappy results.
It has led men of one school of thought to condemn and repudiate the
whole movement, as an immoral product of brute force, regardless of the
rights of conquered peoples. They have refused to study it, and have
made no endeavour to understand it; not realising that the movement
they were condemning was as inevitable and as irresistible as the
movement of the tides--and as capable of being turned to beneficent
ends. On the other hand, the implications of these terms have perhaps
helped to foster in men of another type of mind an unhealthy spirit of
pride in mere domination, as if that were an end in itself, and have
led them to exult in the extension of national power, without closely
enough considering the purposes for which it was to be used. Both
attitudes are deplorable, and in so far as the words 'Empire,'
'Imperial,' and 'Imperialism' tend to encourage them, they are
unfortunate words. They certainly do not adequately express the full
significance of the process whereby the civilisation of Europe has been
made into the civilisation of the world.

Nevertheless the words have to be used, because there are no others
which at all cover the facts. And, after all, they are in some ways
entirely appropriate. A great part of the world's area is inhabited by
peoples who are still in a condition of barbarism, and seem to have
rested in that condition for untold centuries. For such peoples the
only chance of improvement was that they should pass under the dominion
of more highly developed peoples; and to them a European 'Empire'
brought, for the first time, not merely law and justice, but even the
rudiments of the only kind of liberty which is worth having, the
liberty which rests upon law. Another vast section of the world's
population consists of peoples who have in some respects reached a high
stage of civilisation, but who have failed to achieve for themselves a
mode of organisation which could give them secure order and equal laws.
For such peoples also the 'Empire' of Western civilisation, even when