A Voice from the Past - Chesterton

As long as empires go about urging their ideas on others, I always have a notion that the ideas are no good. If they were really so splendid, they would make the country preaching them a wonder of the world. That is the true ideal; a great nation ought not to be a hammer, but a magnet.

G. K Chesterton, 1874-1936, Alarms and Discursions, The Sentimentalist, ( Project Gutenburg, 2006)

Is there truth in this? How should it be put into practice?