[Footnote 3: It is unfortunate that work on the nature of old Far Eastern international relations has no more than just begun. Descriptions from the viewpoint of Western international law often possess the unreal lucidity of dialectical materialism or of theosophy, since it is necessary to read into Chinese and other Far Eastern political institutions the characteristic features of a European invention--the juridical, omnicompetent, secular, territorially limited state. See Djang Chu, _The Chinese Suzerainty_, unpublished doctoral dissertation, the Johns Hopkins University, 1935; Nelson, Melvin Frederick, _The International Status of Korea, 1876-1910_ unpublished doctoral dissertation, Duke University, 1939, particularly Part I, "The International Society of Confucian Monarchies" and Part II, "Korea in Conflicting Societies of Nations"; both attempt to reconstruct the working Asiatic theory in terms comprehensible to the West. Clyde, Paul H., _United States Policy Toward China_, Durham, 1940, Section XXIV, gives a succinct statement and relevant American public documents.] A third meaningful context for Japanese practice is found in the basic, factual scheme of current international relations. No nation in an interdependent world is independent except by legal fiction; none could maintain its present level of civilization without the existence of the others. In these terms, legal independence fades as time passes, and cross-national power becomes more evident. Western imperialism was described by Sun Yat-sen as reducing China to a hypo-colony. More recently, first the Communists and then the Japanese have accused Chiang K'ai-shek of being the puppet of imperialism,[4] while occasional Leftists regard Chiang as even now a puppet of Japan[5] and a few citizens of imperialist states see him as a Communist puppet. The Germans treat Churchill as the puppet of Roosevelt, and Roosevelt as a puppet for international Jewry, while the present Stalinist line attributes puppetry to the entire catalogue of world political institutions save those made quick by its own infallibility. The fundamental point of such appraisal depends upon the _attribution_ of power relationships. Dependence is indisputable only if one government functions within the military framework of another, or if the personnel of the subordinate is drawn from the superior, or if clear and immediate causal relationships can be proved between the continued fiscal or military action of the sustaining government and the actual existence of the sustained government--although even this last leads to subjective interpretation. [Footnote 4: Taylor, George, _The Struggle for North China_, cited, p. 66.] [Footnote 5: Statements to the author, by persons not in Chungking.]