A Western newspaper man, well acquainted with the Nanking situation, told the author that he estimated the regime as 5 per cent Japanophiles, 5 per cent upright men who worked with the enemy because of a sense of public duty toward the Chinese people in the occupied areas, 20 per cent opportunists, and 70 per cent low characters interested in thievery. Nanking officials, to whom these estimates were communicated without revelation of the source, felt the latter categories to be much too high. Several of the more intelligent men in Nanking offered the argument that if they did not share in the regime, unscrupulous elements would deceive the Japanese and oppress the people; or they stated that the Reorganized Government had brought back the flag, the constitution, the titles, the law codes, and the political doctrines of the National Government, so that occupied and unoccupied China had the same polity. They disregarded the point that this abetted the enemy. Thirdly, the government has nothing to do. The power of the Nanking regime in no instance reaches beyond the Japanese patrols. No counties are under Nanking control which are not also under Japanese control. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has no foreign affairs. The Ministry of Finance collects some excises and disburses many salaries, as well as limited amounts for the upkeep of some schools, law courts, minimal public services, and state property, insofar as the Japanese have returned any. (It is interesting to note that the officials at Nanking, deploring the "Communist" tendencies of Chiang, live in commandeered houses, and use the commandeering of private property as a form of patronage for their supporters.) The Central Political Council has so little to do that it draws up a budget and solemnly debates items of less than U. S. $100.[10] The officials cannot ride far from the city limits of Nanking, because of the guerrillas who operate all about. The railroad runs only by daylight. The Nanking police are mostly unarmed, except for clubs--an unprecedented condition for modern China!--and many who carry rifles or pistols seem to have no cartridges. [Footnote 10: See _The People's Tribune_ (Shanghai), XXIX, p. 130 _ff._, August 1940. This is the semi-official English organ of the regime; each issue contains a selection of public documents. It is edited by the volatile T'ang Leang-li. The other English-language journal is _The Voice of China_, fortnightly, Nanking, edited by Mr. L. K. Kentwell, a graduate of Oxford and Columbia Universities, Hawaiian-born of British and Cantonese parentage. The journal is spirited, and very anti-British.]