More than any event in the memory of the present generation – more than the American War of the sixties, more even than the Home Rule proposals of the eighties – the present war has come with a sword into our midst. It has searched the hearts and tried the reins not only of the great political parties of the State, but of more homogeneous groups of politicians, which we have hitherto been accustomed to think of as bound together in ‘solid simplicity’. At first the controversy was chiefly confined to the circumstances out of which the war arose, but as it has gone on it has come more and more to turn upon the meaning and justification of the whole policy that goes by the name of Imperialism. This is as it should be. No question can be conceived which more vitally concerns the future well-being of the nation, and we might say of the world. The sooner, therefore, we can get away from the heated atmosphere of current controversy, and turn to the wider issues that have been brought to the front by it with the sincere desire to understand them, the better for us as a nation. The present article is an attempt to consider, without reference to South African politics, or party politics of any kind, two questions which everyone will admit are fundamental. First, what is the meaning of the thing we call Imperialism? and second, what ought to be our attitude towards it?