The other factor, however, was the unpreparedness of either communists or soldiers to take over at a national level. Unlike the communist party of China, those of Southeast Asia had been crushed by colonials' or Japanese since 1926, and had at most a few years of experience since regrouping. The people with the guns were extraordinarily divided, and mostly in their twenties, with negligible strategic or technical training. Only Thailand had a long tradition of a national army, which had already inherited the 1932 revolution when Field Marshall Phibun Songkhram became the increasingly authoritarian Prime Minister in 1938. As noted in the previous chapter, he was eased out in the necessarily anti-fascist atmosphere of 1945, but returned to the Prime Ministership in another military coup in November 1947. The intervening period of Pridi’s dominance had been one of Thailand’s most liberal, when a fully elected legislature was finally inaugurated, and laws were passed against military involvement in politics. Pridi even made peace with the royalists and invited King Ananda Mahidol to return for his twentieth birthday. When the king was mysteriously killed, however, the royalists and militarists found a pretext to unite in support of a coup, manufacturing some rumours that Pridi was responsible for regicide.