How is the power of the people to be exercised? It is to be exercised by democratic means. To Sun Yat-sen, the liberty of the nation and the power of the people were virtually identical. If the Chinese race gained its freedom, that freedom, exercised in an orderly manner, could mean only democracy. It is this close association of nationalism (_min tsu_) and democracy (_min ch’üan_), this consideration of democracy as the expression of nationalism, that forms, within the framework of the _San Min Chu I_, what is probably the best nationalist argument for democracy—best, that is, in being most coherent with the Three Principles as a whole. If the view of democracy just expressed be considered an exposition of the fundamental necessity of democracy, the third argument may be termed the dialectical or historical championship of democracy. Sun Yat-sen believed in the existence of progress, and considered that there was an inevitable tendency toward democracy: the overthrow of the Manchus was a result of the “... world tide. That world current can be compared to the course of the Yangtze or the Yellow River. The flow of the stream turns perhaps in many directions, now toward the north, now toward the south, but in the end flows toward the east in spite of all obstacles; nothing can stem it. In the same way the world-tide passes ...; now it has arrived at democracy, and there is no way to stem it.”(123) This belief in the inevitability as well as the justice of his cause encouraged Sun, and has lent to his movement—as his followers see it—something of the impressive sweep that the Communists see in their movement. Sun Yat-sen did not devise any elaborate scheme of dialectical materialism or economic determinism to bolster his belief in the irreversibility of the flow to democracy. With infinite simplicity, he presented an exposition of democracy in space and time. In time, he saw a change from the rule of force to theocracy, then to monarchy, and then to democracy; this change was a part of the progress of mankind, which to him was self-evident and inevitable.(124) In space he perceived that increasingly great numbers of people threw off monarchical rule and turned to democracy. He hailed the breakdown of the great empires, Germany and Russia, as evidence of the power of democracy. “... if we observe (things) from all angles, we see that the world progresses daily, and we realize that the present tide has already swept into the age of democracy; and that no matter how great drawbacks and failures may be, _democracy will maintain itself in the world for a long time_ (_to come_). For that reason, thirty years ago, we promoters of the revolution, _resolved that it was impossible to speak of the greatness of China or to carry out the revolution without advocating democracy_.”(125)