Some sense of the perpetual urgencies underlying Chinese government in the past decade may be obtained by consideration of the Military Affairs Commission.[19] A similar agency was one of the political wheels on which the Nationalist-Communist machine rolled victoriously North in the Great Revolution of 1925-27. After the organization of a relatively stable government at Nanking, the separate military commission was due for absorption into the coordinate pattern of government; instead, it has lingered under one form or another for almost twenty years, growing great in recurrent crises, while the Ministry of War (which was to have absorbed it) has become its adjunct. War led to sudden distension of the Commission, and the creation of an agency comparable to a sixth _yüan_, if not to a duplicate, shogunal government in the Japanese sense. The Commission had its own head, its own _Pu_ (Ministries or Departments), its own staff and field services. Duplicating the regular government on the one side, and the party administration on the other, it flowered into bureaucracy so lavishly that a fourth agency--co-ordinator for the first three--began to be needed. [Footnote 19: _Chün-shih Wei-yüan-hui_. _The Chinese Year Book_, _v.d._, cited, and most of the official publicity from Chungking translates this term as "National Military Council," which is far from the original, literally "military-affairs-committee." "National Military Council" is also easily confused with the Supreme National Defense Council. Hence the present translation is employed, following Tsang, O. B., _A Supplement to a Complete Chinese-English Dictionary_, Shanghai, 1937, and the original.] Simplicity of government structure has not been a part of the Chinese tradition; the quasi-state of the Empire had been as elaborate as its more potent European counterparts; and the foliation of government at war cannot be taken as _prima facie_ proof of inefficiency. Personnel is provided by giving each officer two, five, even ten jobs; the work is done--delegation and counter-delegation frequently cancel out--and the creation of new agencies does not inescapably involve confusion. The Military Affairs Commission consists of a Chairman--the Generalissimo (_Tsung-ssŭ-ling_), who is Chiang K'ai-shek--and seven to nine other members, all appointed by the Council of State upon designation by the Supreme National Defense Council.[20] The key officers of the armed forces are _ex officio_ members, and the Commission is charged with the military side of the prosecution of the war. Its power has been liberally interpreted. New agencies have been attached to it as they arose; now it deals with social work, relief, education, agitation, propaganda, espionage, government-sponsored "social revolution," and many economic matters in addition to its narrowly military affairs.