The Persian flag is white with a border, green on the upper edge of the flag and in the fly, and red in the hoist and on the lower edge. On the white ground are the lion and sun.
The flag of Siam is a white elephant on a red ground. That of Korea, a white flag with, in the centre, a ball, half red, half blue, the colours being curiously intermixed, the whole being precisely as if two large commas of equal size, one red and the other blue, were united to form a complete circle.
The Chinese flag is a yellow one, bearing on it the emblem of the dragon devouring the sun. As at present used, it is a square flag, but an earlier version was a triangular right-angled flag, hoisted with the right-angle in the base of the hoist. The merchant flag is red with a yellow ball in the centre.
Among the South American republics the Brazilian flag is peculiar inasmuch as it is the only national flag which carries a motto.
Mexico flies precisely the same tricolour as Italy, but plain in the case of the merchant ensign, and charged on the central stripe with the Mexican arms (as illustrated) when flown as a man-of-war ensign.
The Argentine flag is as illustrated flown by the navy, but, when used by the mercantile marine, the sun emblazoned on the central white stripe is omitted, the flag otherwise being precisely the same.
The Venezuelan flag shown is also that of the navy. The flag of the mercantile marine is the same, but the shield bearing the arms of the state is not introduced into the yellow top stripe in the corner near the hoist, as in the naval flag.
The Chilean ensign illustrated is used alike by men-of-war and vessels in the mercantile marine, but, when flown as the standard of the president, the Chilean arms and supporters are placed in the centre of the flag.
The plain red, white, red in vertical stripes, is the flag of the mercantile marine of Peru, and becomes the naval ensign when charged on the central stripe with the Peruvian arms as shown in our illustration. In fact, in nearly every case with the South American republics, the ordinary mercantile marine flag becomes that of the war navy by the addition of the national arms, and in some cases is used in the same way as a presidential flag.
In nearly every case the flags of the lesser American republics are tricolours, and in a very great many of them the flags are by no means such combinations as would meet with the approval of European heralds. All flag devising should be in accordance with heraldic laws, and one of the most important of these is that colour should not be placed on colour, nor metal on metal, yellow in blazonry being the equivalent of gold and white of silver. Hence, properly devised tricolours are such as, for example, those of France, where the red and blue are divided by white, or Belgium, where the black and red are divided by yellow. On the other hand, the yellow, blue, red of Venezuela is heraldically an abomination.