The China experts, traveling through the areas controlled by various warlords, reported that Chiang's Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang, was dragging its feet, reserving its American-supplied arms for an eventual showdown with the Communists. The old China hands predicted that in such a fight, the Communists would win. They called instead for American pressure on Chiang to reform his Government and direct his forces against the Japanese, in cooperation with the Communists. "Selfish and corrupt, incapable and obstructive," were a few of the words Mr. Service used to describe the Chiang Government in a 1944 memo to General Stilwell. Vincent and the China Hands also argued that the Chinese Communists had their own genuine domestic roots that might trump any ideological loyalty to the USSR, as was occurring at the time with Tito's Yugoslavia. The defenders of the China Hands argued that it was exactly this perspective in China policy that Nixon and Kissinger began to implement in 1972.〔(John Kifner, "John Service, a Purged 'China Hand,' Dies at 89", New York Times (February 4, 1999) ).〕