The beauty, American education, polished cosmopolitan manners, and sense of publicity of the three sisters have made them sensational news figures. Their eldest brother's success has added distinction to this family. The inescapable consequence has been a great deal of speculation about the "Soong dynasty"; but the surprising feature of the Soongs is not their fame and power through marriage, plus ability, but their slight cohesion as a Chinese family. They have stood together only at times of highest crisis, and not always then. Mme. Sun Yat-sen has continued along the Leftist tangent which her husband followed just before he died. For years she was the only Leftist in China who did not fear death or a more painful fate. She kept her ideals; from the homes of her family she wrote scathing denunciations of the blood-soaked tyranny of her brother-in-law, her sisters, her stepson, and her brother. Mme. K'ung appears to have worked most steadfastly in the interest of the entire family, although rivalry between her brother and her husband has been a matter of general report. Mme. Chiang K'ai-shek, the youngest of the three sisters, has been a loyal wife first of all, and has contributed enormously to the Generalissimo's international prestige. No other modern leader possesses an able publicity adviser, capable and apt, so near to himself. The family relationships of Sun Yat-sen thus display themselves in his son, constitutional and moderate, who is inclined to favor Mme. Sun, with Sun's sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law following their respective political courses with their own families--all on cordial political terms, but scarcely a monolithic family bloc. In addition to his doctrine, his Party, his followers, and his family, Sun Yat-sen has bequeathed his name. As Chung Shan, he fills the void in Chinese polity left by the Emperor. Every Monday morning his will is read, throughout every government office in the land. His picture is seen everywhere. His sayings and slogans have become the shibboleths of revolution, union, and reconstruction. The reverence paid to him is a form of secular worship, focussed upon a magnificent mausoleum near the cenotaphs of the Ming Emperors on Purple Mountain, Nanking. All virtues and most knowledge are attributed to him; inescapably, some hard-headed people react against the cult. Dead, he is to the Chinese what the King is to the British, or the assembled forefathers to the Americans, or--save partial eclipse by Stalin--Lenin is to the Soviet Union. Perpetual leader of the Kuomintang, Sun has in death more power than life vouchsafed him. In a world wild with alarm and hungry for leadership, his sense of providential mission and of terrible political urgency no longer seems shrill or vain. His is the greatest of posthumous satisfactions: vindication by history. THE SAN MIN CHU I