What was the net effect of such psychological warfare? In the first place, much use of common terms without regard to ultimate fulfillment means that Communist propaganda is self-defeating. It can succeed only in situations of desperation, anarchy, or terror. That is satisfactory to the Communist leaders, because they think their _science_ tells them that the capitalist states will lead to desperation, anarchy and terror anyhow. Secondly, Communist propaganda sacrifices all other values to the propaganda. One has to be a religious fanatic (of the Marxist sort) to turn it out; one has to be ready for a totally new creed in order to keep on accepting it. International understanding, patriotism, truthfulness, freedom of action, artistic conscience--all these are sacrificed to propaganda. In the end, _everything is propaganda_ to the Communist. Nothing which hurts Communism can be true. They have their _science_. (If you would like to look at this fabulous _science_, read _The Communist Manifesto_, V. I. Lenin's _The Teachings of Karl Marx_, and Stalin's latest current compilation of speeches. You will be impressed by the crazy logic, the genuine but ill-informed zeal.) Third and most important, Communist psychological warfare is continuous. The themes may change--sometimes provocative, sometimes almost conciliatory--but the machinery, the operation, does not. Communist propaganda is therefore seasoned and professional, dependent on a powerful police-state at home and on uneducated or emotionally ill fanatics abroad, except for those few countries where Communism is so stable as to attract hard-headed or practical idealistic men.
This Bolshevik success, rather than the splendid but short-lasting accomplishments of the Allies in World War I, kept psychological warfare on the map. Modern Communism is permanent psychological warfare in action.
The Communist leaders unwittingly made a tremendous mistake between 1922 and 1927. They invited the military and political staff of the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang) to cooperate with them. Filled with their own Communist sense of certainty, it never occurred to them that anyone else could outsmart them. The Chinese did. Their military chief of mission in Moscow learned everything that the Communists had to teach about irregular fighting, subversive propaganda, revolutionary situations, mass agitation. He then went home and got more Communist aid to carry out the military phase of the Nationalist revolution, which started under way in the summer of 1922. The old war-lord armies were helpless in the face of agents, agitators, poster crews, student strikes, press propaganda and indoctrinated troops. The most sensational war in modern Asia involved relatively little combat. The Nationalist leader used all the Communist psychological warfare techniques, and added a few more of his own. His name was Chiang Kai-shek.