ing too rapidly. In his Civic Forum address in New York three years
ago, Wu Ting Fang quoted Wen Hsiang's saying, "When China wakes up,
she will move like an avalanche." A movement with the power of an
avalanche needs very careful guidance.

The one question about which every Chinese reformer's heart is now
aflame is that of an early parliament. By the imperial decree of 1908
a parliament and a constitution were {104} promised within nine years.
At that time there was little demand for a parliament, but with the
organization of the Provincial Assemblies in the fall of 1909 the
people were given an opportunity to confer together and were also
given a taste of power. For the first time, too, they seem to have
realized suddenly the serious plight of the empire and the fact that
since the deaths of the late Emperor and Empress Dowager, and the
dismissal of Yuan Shih-Kai by the Prince Regent acting for the infant
Emperor, the Peking government is without a strong leader.
Consequently the demand for a hastened parliament has grown too
powerful to be resisted. True, when the delegates from all the
Provincial Assemblies voiced this demand to the Prince Regent last
spring his reply was the Edict of May 29, declaring that the programme
outlined by their late Majesties, like the laws of the Medes and
Persians, could not be changed. Furthermore, the Throne remarked
significantly: "Let no more petitions or memorials upon this subject
be presented to Us; Our mind is made up."

Unfortunately for the peace of the Regent, however, John Chinaman is
absurdly and obnoxiously persistent on occasion. If you will not heed
other appeals, he may commit suicide on your doorstep, and then you
are bewitched for the rest of your days, to say nothing of your
nights. The talk of an earlier parliament would not down even at the
bidding of the Dragon Throne. Quietly unmanageable delegations waited
upon viceroys and compelled these high officials to petition for a
reopening of the question. Down in Kiang Su a scholar cut off his left
arm and with the red blood wrote his appeal. In Union Medical
Hospital, here in Peking, as I write this, a group of students are
recovering from self-inflicted wounds made in the same cause. Going to
the Prince Regent's, they were told that the Prince could not see
them. "Very well," they declared, "we shall sit here till he does." At
length the Prince sent word that, though he could not receive them, he
would consider th