Chiang went to the Imperial Military Academy at Paotingfu. Aloof and ambitious, he was so successful that within a year he was sent to the Shinbo Gokyo (Preparatory Military Academy) in Tokyo; he remained in Japan four years. The Japanese under whom he studied retained no special impression of him, except that he eagerly accepted discipline. As a part of his study, he served with the 13th Field Artillery (Takada) Regiment of the Imperial Army. Chiang therewith acquired not merely military knowledge, but a working insight into Japanese language, mentality, and strength. His military studies were terminated by the outbreak of the Republican Revolution in 1911. Chiang returned to Shanghai, and began a vigorous military career under the local military commander, pro-Sun in politics. Chiang himself had come into contact with the Republican-Nationalist group while in Japan. There was already no question of where his loyalties lay. He made rapid progress, and saw something of fighting. He took part in the abortive Second Revolution, of 1913, which was the military attempt by Sun Yat-sen and his first military coadjutant, Huang Hsing, to check Yüan Shih-k'ai and to save the newborn Republic by force. In this time, while the enthusiasm of his military studies had not yet worn off, Chiang wrote prodigiously. No Westerner has, so far as the present author knows, taken the trouble to go through Chiang's writings in order to study him. Chinese commentators praise them as full of military acumen, a sense of the novel and important forces in Chinese society, and a vigorous moralism--modern-military in form, but archaic in language--which animated Chiang's youthful desire to improve the world with good, technically apt gunfire. He was at this time twenty-three or twenty-four. Between this early career and the later years of Chiang's life--the years in which his star rode incessantly ascendant--there is a gap of several years, 1913 to 1918. In this time Chiang lived a life primarily civilian, although he remained under the patronage of his first military leader, General Chen Ch'i-mei, murdered in 1915. Chiang went on a military intelligence trip for the Sun Yat-sen group, travelling through Manchuria in 1915. He opposed Yüan's moves, and stayed in close contact with the patriotic organization. Yet, the total picture of his life in these years lacks the connecting linkage which binds his childhood, his school days, and his mature career. His activity, while considerable, was diffuse.