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