Finally, the deepest element eludes political analysis: the moderation of the Chinese character, and the heritage of Confucian common sense. The Chinese language and the Confucian inheritance of ideological sophistication lead to clarity, pragmatism, and practicality. The Chinese have long delighted in ingenious formulae with which to meet _de jure_ impasses, while proceeding _de facto_ in quite another direction. The Chinese are perhaps the only people in the world with enough finesse about "face" to save the Communist face. The Generalissimo is in theory consciously anti-Marxian; but when he was asked whether it is possible that Communists or Leftists might exploit democratic rights for unscrupulous power politics, he answered quietly by writing: "No, because democracy in itself has the ability to work out the solutions for those problems if there are any." A Communist leader said, the Generalissimo would have nothing to fear from the Communists if he won the war. His prestige would be unassailable. Chiang and the Communists both know this. THE NATIONAL SALVATION MOVEMENT The National Salvation (_Chiu Kuo_) movement is third in point of size and influence, and has been largely instrumental in assisting national unification and resistance. The movement began in 1935 with the organization of a number of professors, students, and young intellectuals who were influenced by the student anti-appeasement movement in North China. It had a simple, and very clear program: stop civil war; stop appeasement.[14] Unlike the Kuomintang or the Communists, the National Salvationists never developed formal dogma, or a comprehensive ideology. Genuinely a movement, it had no membership books, no formal or systematic organization, no minorities, and no schisms. The movement spread like wildfire, across the length and breadth of China as well as overseas; and, because of its lack of formal hierarchy, was ignored by the National Government. Its loose organization, consciously based on the middle class of clerks, students, business men, professors, etc., followed functional lines familiar to the Chinese. [Footnote 14: An early statement of National Salvation views is found in Wang Tsao-shih, "A Salvationist's View of the Sino-Japanese Problem," _The China Quarterly_, Vol. II, No. 4 (Special Fall Number, 1937), p. 681-9. The author is one of the Seven Gentlemen.]