was mastery of the steamship for the Japanese--a visible demonstration to an Asiatic people of their own accomplishments with Western technology. As for other improvements of the armies, only three factors need be mentioned. The armies were consolidated generally, and with their better status--in literacy, pay, means of subsistence, and regularity of control--there came a realization that the military force was the creature of the national state. The Chinese nation was taking form as an ideological and social entity of sufficient strength to command the direct allegiance of fighting men. A new respect arose for the officers and men of the armies. Under Yüan Shih-k'ai the armies had been able to evolve a respectability of their own making; under Chiang K'ai-shek this respectability began to be accepted at its face value by the rest of the society, so that a pilot was not only admired by the crowd but was recognized as an expert among experts, even in literary and civil-minded circles. Secondly, the armies affected the nation by road construction. In the course of the Nationalist-Communist wars of 1927-1937 the Nationalists built thousands of miles of highway in order to make full use of their new mobility gained from machine power. The military roads, supplemented by civilian roads built with an eye to military use, constituted a network of communications upon which a new political geography could be framed--with new strategic points and new avenues of commerce. Thirdly, the armies began to emphasize culture and comfort. The soldiers were given a taste of twentieth century life and standards; their civilian kin and friends who lived under less favorable conditions saw in the elite sections of the armies a mass demonstration of China's modernization.