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 sidered that Feng and Chiang Kai-shek have the best trained and best ordered soldiers. Feng has no independent sources of equipment or supplies. He has been dependent on Russia. In fighting quality, it is generally felt that the men of the north are superior to those of the south, with the exception of those of Hunan, but in morale the Nationalist armies are superior. Financially, Mukden and Shanghai are more independent than are the other centers. Feng controls a relatively infertile and non-lucrative principality. Wu owes much of his weakness to lack of funds. The Canton-Hankow Government has developed a substantial independent income.

Each of the major military leaders is an absolute ruler, exercising power of life and death and collecting taxes at will throughout the region over which he has control, except that, in the region under control of the Nationalist Government, the military authority is—in theory at least—subordinate to that of the Executive Committee.

In many of the campaigns money is more decisive than bullets. Both officers and men frequently go over from one side to the other. Cities fall without a battle. Armies temporarily victorious seem strangely reluctant to follow up and annihilate the enemy. All the while the people are made to pay the bills—and the bank accounts of the "tuchuns" grow.

China's public finances are in a state of complete chaos. Except for the Customs and a portion