Not only was Sun Yat-sen the leader of the Party; he was not even to have a successor. The first revised constitution of the Kuomintang provided for his life-time headship; the second stipulated that the post of _Tsung Li_ should never be filled by any other person. As _Tsung Li_—the Party Leader, it is still customary to refer to Sun Yat-sen in China today. This, again, was not the display of a superhuman vanity so much as a practical requirement designed to offset the possibility of conflict and intrigue among the most conspicuous party chiefs, which would quite probably arise should the question of a succession to Sun Yat-sen ever be mentioned. There was, of course, the element of respect in this gesture—the implication that the magistral chair of Sun Yat-sen was too high a place for any common man to sit. So far as leadership was concerned the Kuomintang was an autocracy until the death of Sun Yat-sen. In all other party matters attempts were made to cultivate democratic form and instil democratic morale. The prudence of this choice may seem to have been borne out by the course of history, since the Communists did not become ambitious, nor the Nationalists jealous, to the point of open conflict until after the death of Sun Yat-sen. Western thought will have to make extensive allowances before it can comprehend a democratic Party which operated under the unquestioned authority of a single man, without recourse to the formula of a plebiscite or election to a boss-ship in the form of a nominal post made significant only by the personal conspicuousness of the incumbent. Had Karl Marx lived to work in the Russian Revolution, he might have occupied a position analogous to that which Sun Yat-sen did in the Chinese. In other respects the new Kuomintang organization was remarkably like the Communist. There was the extraordinarily complex, but somehow effective, mechanism of a Party Congress, a Central Executive Committee, and a Standing Committee. There was a Political Bureau and an agency for overseas agitation. There were also the wide ramifications of an extensive net work of auxiliary organizations designed to draw strength from every popular enthusiasm, and deflect it to the cause of the Nationalist revolution. In due time these agencies were turned about and swung into action against the Communists who had attempted to master them.