If this were the case, the danger from diplomacy would be greater even than that of war. A nation could be extinguished by the stroke of a pen. The Chinese had no reason to pride themselves on their possible military power, their diplomacy, or their present independence. Their military power was practically nil. Their diplomacy amounted to nothing. It was not the Chinese but the aggressors themselves that had brought about the long-enduring stalemate with respect to the Chinese question. The Washington Conference was an attempt on the part of the foreigners to apportion their rights and interests in China without fighting. This made possible the reduction of armaments.(254) The present position of China was not one in which the Chinese could take pride. It was humiliating. China, because it was not the colony of one great power, was the sub-colony of all. The Chinese were not even on a par with the colonial subjects of other countries. The shameful and dangerous position thus outlined by Sun could be remedied only by the development of nationalism and the carrying-on of the struggle against imperialism. Anti-imperialism was the fruit of his contact with the Bolsheviks. His nationalism had approached their programs of national liberation, but the precise verbal formulation had not been adopted until he came in contact with the Marxian dialecticians of the Third International. His anti-imperialism differed from theirs in several important respects. He was opposed to political intervention for economic purposes; this was imperialism, and unjust. The economic consequences of political intervention were no better than the intervention itself. Nevertheless, at no time did he offer an unqualified rejection of capitalism. He sought loans for China, and distinguished between capital which came to China in such a manner as to profit the Chinese as well as its owners, and that which came solely to profit the capitalists advancing it, to the economic disadvantage of the Chinese. In his ideology, Sun Yat-sen never appears to have accepted the Marxian thesis of the inevitable fall of capitalism, nor does he seem to have thought that imperialism was a necessary and final stage in the history of capitalism. In short, his program of anti-imperialism and the foreign policy of Chinese political nationalism, seem to be quite comparable to the policy held by the Soviets, apart from those attitudes and activities which their peculiar ideology imposed. In practical matters, in affairs and actions which he could observe with his own eyes, Sun Yat-sen was in accord with the anti-imperialism of Soviet Russia and of his Communist advisers. In the deeper implications of anti-imperialism and in the pattern of the Marxian-Leninist ideology underlying it in the U.S.S.R., he showed little interest. Ideologically he remained Chinese; programmatically he was willing to learn from the Russians.