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528 The Ideal of Human Unitylegitimately done, to increase it. The principle of free nationalitycould only be applied by them in its purity where their ownimperial interests were not affected, as against Turkey and theCentral Powers, because there the principle was consonant withtheir own interests and could be supported as against German,Austrian or Turkish interests by the natural force of a successfulwar which was or could be made to appear morally justifiedin its results because it was invited by the Powers which hadto suffer. It could not be applied in its purity where their ownimperial interests were affected, because there it was opposed toexisting forces and there was no sufficient countervailing forceby which that opposition could be counteracted. Here, therefore,it must be acted upon in a qualified sense, as a force moderatingthat of pure imperialism. So applied, it would amount in factat most to the concession of internal self-government or HomeRule in such proportion, at such a time or by such stages asmight be possible, practicable and expedient for the interestsof the empire and of the subject nation so far as they couldbe accommodated with one another. It must be understood, inother words, as the common sense of the ordinary man wouldunderstand it; it could not be and has nowhere been understoodin the sense which would be attached to it by the pure idealistof the Russian type who was careless of all but the naked purityof his principle.What then would be the practical consequences of this qualifiedprinciple of free nationality as it would have been possibleto apply it after a complete victory of the Allied Powers, itsrepresentatives? In America it would have no field of immediateapplication. In Africa there are not only no free nations, butwith the exception of Egypt and Abyssinia no nations, properlyspeaking; for Africa is the one part of the world where the oldtribal conditions have still survived and only tribal peoples exist,not nations in the political sense of the word. Here then a completevictory of the Allies meant the partition of the continentbetween three colonial empires, Italy, France and England, withthe continuance of the Belgian, Spanish and Portuguese enclavesand the precarious continuance for a time of the Abyssinian