In the age of air power in China the relation between the army, the government, and the economy was revolutionized. The new power of a state with actual authority[11] led to the creation of an army dependent on an intricate and sensitive financial and economic system, operating under a regular scheme of law. The strength of the government made modern armies possible; modern armies made corresponding political forms imperative. A resulting tendency was for the armies to take on national form. Even in those areas where _tuchünism_ had left its imprint upon society, or where provincial autonomy provided a factual check upon the national authorities, the regional armies accepted organizational details and long-range plans set forth by the central government. Armies which had arisen as dumps for the unemployed or as resources for civil war were fitted together so as to make the Chinese forces resemble the other armies of the world--which exist for the preservation, defense, or aggrandizement of national states. Foreign military observers, equipped with the critical faculties of their profession, might look at the Chinese armies and state point-blank that China had not an army but merely armed men. They could not, however, deny that the Chinese armed forces in their latest phase were on the way to becoming an army nationally organized and fit to serve as the instrument of a great nation. The lessons of nearly a thousand years of European and American political experience may be epitomized in great part in the word _nation_; the Chinese armies helped to give this word true significance in China.