ABSTRACT
Analysis of the actual course of modern Imperialism has laid bare the combination of economic and political forces which fashions it. The largest and most essential facts of Imperialism, political, economic, moral, are commonly unknown to the average “educated” Briton. Imperialism has been floated on a sea of vague, shifty, well-sounding phrases which are seldom tested by close contact with fact. In more primitive nations the lusts of domination and material acquisition which underlie Imperialism express themselves freely and unconsciously: there is little self-complacency because there is little self-consciousness. The chivalrous spirit of Imperialism leads neither Great Britain nor any other Western nation to assail a powerful State, however tyrannous, or to assist a weak State reputed to be poor. Imperialism is based upon a persistent misrepresentation of facts and forces, chiefly through a most refined process of selection, exaggeration, and attenuation, directed by interested cliques and persons so as to distort the face of history.
