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