conditions, the annexation of territory by a European state would not have threatened the creation of a monopoly, but would have meant the assumption of a duty on behalf of civilisation, the acrimonies and jealousies which have attended the process of partition would have been largely conjured away. In 1878 such a solution would have presented few difficulties. For at that date the only European state which controlled large undeveloped areas was Britain; and Britain, as we have seen, had on her own account arrived at this solution, and had administered, as she still administers, all those regions of her Empire which do not possess self-governing rights in the spirit of the principle we have suggested. Why was it that this solution, or some solution on these lines, was not then adopted, and had no chance of being adopted? It was because the European states, and first and foremost among them Germany, were still dominated by a political theory which forbade their taking such a view. We may call this theory the Doctrine of Power. It is the doctrine that the highest duty of every state is to aim at the extension of its own power, and that before this duty every other consideration must give way. The Doctrine of Power has never received a more unflinching expression than it received from the German Treitschke, whose influence was at its height during the years of the great rush for extra-European possessions. The advocate of the Doctrine of Power is not, and cannot be, satisfied with equality of opportunity; he demands supremacy, he demands monopoly, he demands the means to injure and destroy his rivals. It would not be just to say that this doctrine was influential only in Germany; it was in some degree potent everywhere, especially in this period, which was the period par excellence of 'imperialism' in the bad sense of the term. But it is certainly true that no state has ever been so completely dominated by it as Germany; and no state less than Britain. It was in the light of this doctrine that the demands of the new scientific industry were interpreted. Hag-ridden by this conception, when the statesmen of Europe awoke to the importance of the non-European world, it was not primarily the economic needs of their countries that they thought of, for these were, on the whole, not inadequately met: what struck their imagination was that, in paying no attention to the outer world, they had missed great opportunities of increasing their power. This oversight, they resolved, must be rectified before it was too late.