Despite recurrent clashes, it is likely that the areas and the government will continue their present relations. In part this is owing to the genuineness of the universal hatred of Japan and the devotion to the long-cherished unification now achieved; in even greater part the wrangling, acrimonious, but effective cooperation of the government and the guerrilla Left depends on their equal and great desire for such cooperation. The highest Kuomintang leaders--above all others, Chiang--have pledged themselves to unity and cooperation, and are determined to eschew civil war in the midst of invasion; the higher Communist leaders are equally determined. In three years of collaboration, the highest officers on each side have developed very genuine respect for each other's sincerity. Quarrels are provoked by the men in-between, overbearing Nationalists or the doctrinaire Communists, who cannot forget 1927-37. (The author talked to one Communist leader who had an odd, not unattractive muscular tic in his face: the consequence of Kuomintang torture a few years past. Yet he collaborates, and so do his Kuomintang equivalents, men whose parents lie in unknown graves.) The common people on both sides want peace above all else, internal peace between factions, and peace--after victory, and then only--with Japan. The juxtaposed and competitive forces watch one another, compete in the development of institutions, and engage in an auction of good government: whoever wins the deepest love and esteem of the Chinese people wins China in the end. Few institutional reforms in the West have had such fateful stimuli. CHAPTER V THE KUOMINTANG The Kuomintang, a Chinese political party, was formed by federation of old anti-Manchu secret societies, and has become the vehicle for the will of its Leader, Sun Yat-sen: constitutionally and legally it is the superior of the Chinese National Government; administratively, one of the three chief organs of policy execution for the regime; politically, the only legal political party in Free China. It has had undisputed primacy, but not monopoly, in domestic Chinese politics for fourteen years. Despite revolutionary purposes, and idealistic obligations, the Kuomintang is responsible for the welfare of the government which it created. Its interest is therefore superior to and identical with the government's; the party of a one-party state has no business criticizing the government, since the party at all times possesses the means of correction or change.