Secretiveness in a nation's highest policy-making organ is somewhat unusual in the modern world. In most states the invisible government of practical acquaintance and association between leaders provides a meeting ground, and traditions require a formal, open exercise of public authority. As a matter of fact, a few generally accepted data concerning the Supreme National Defense Council are readily apparent to the observer in Chungking. In the first place, it is what its title implies--the highest agency of political control. Its meetings are the constant source of new policy and tangible control. Secondly, one finds a universal belief that the Generalissimo, who attends these meetings in the multiple capacity of Chairman of the Council, Party Chief of the Kuomintang, President of the Executive _Yüan_, Chairman of the People's Political Council, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Navy, and Air Forces, etc., faithfully employs Council meetings for very real debate and discussion of government and Party policy, and for the conduct of the war. He is not believed to take any important step arbitrarily, without consulting the Council. (In the past, he has been known to act with dramatic and concealed swiftness, opening his mind to no one before the crucial consummation of his plans, but at the present time this has apparently disappeared.[6]) [Footnote 6: For a biased but bitterly graphic portrayal of Chiang's tiger leaps in politics, see Isaacs, Harold, work cited, _passim_. Mr. Isaacs' portrayal of Chiang shows him as ambitious, able, and villainous in his need for power and his hostility to the proletariat. The Trotskyite viewpoint is a usefully different one from that obviously adopted by the present author.] Third, the Council, while extending beyond the men who are primarily Party leaders and including military and political figures who (irrespective of nominal Party membership) are independent, has transformed the arcanum of Party power into a body more representative of the entire nation. Fourth, significant in connection with the Japanese charge of Chungking Bolshevization, the Communists and other Leftists, while fairly represented in advisory and even in military bodies, are presumed to have no representation whatever on the Supreme National Defense Council, nor is such representation regarded as probable in the near future. Chiang K'ai-shek has at hand a counselling and co-governing body whose fundamental purposes are completely one with his own.