The time between 1916 and 1928 is commonly called the 'warlord period'. While warlords used such personal ties to cultivate the loyalty of their officers, their subordinates often had similar relationships with their own juniors. Some commanders tried to minimize these secondary loyalties, and focus all allegiance directly on themselves, but it was difficult to eliminate them. The percentage of public revenue actually devoted to public purposes evidently declined in most provinces through the warlord era. The chaos of warlordism, and the concomitant weakness of the Peking government, rendered China peculiarly vulnerable to foreign pressures and encroachments. This chapter looks at some events to note how militarism supervened and finally supplanted the vestiges of constitutionalism. On the one hand, the warlord years represented the low point of political unity and national strength in the twentieth century. On the other hand, they also represented the peak of intellectual and literary achievement.