ives at the beginning of the outbreak, members of that tribe
have been shown great clemency. The rebel leaders have impressed upon
the minds of their followers that their first duty is to respect life
and property, and have summarily punished those having any inclination
to loot or kill. Despite the numerous outrages and acts of brutality by
the Manchus and imperial troops, the revolutionaries have been
moderate, lenient, and humane in their treatment of their prisoners and
enemies. Unnecessary bloodshed has been avoided by them as much as
possible. As Dr. Wu Ting-fang has said: "The most glorious page of
China's history is being written with a bloodless pen." Regarding the
cause of the revolution, it must be noted that the revolt was not a
sudden, sporadic movement, nor the result of any single event. It is
the outcome of a long series of events, the culmination of the friction
and contact with the Western world in the last half-century, especially
the last thirty years, and of the importation of Western ideas and
methods into China by her foreign-educated students and other agents.

During the last decade, especially the last five years, there has been
a most wonderful awakening among the people in the empire. One could
almost see the growth of national consciousness, so rapidly has it
developed. When the people fully realized their shortcomings and their
country's deplorable weakness as it has been constantly brought out in
her dealings with foreign Powers, they fell into a state of
dissatisfaction and profound unrest. Filled with the shame of national
disgrace and imbued with democratic ideas, they have been crying for a
strong and liberal government, but their pleas and protests have been
in most cases ignored and in a few cases responded to with half-hearted
superficial reforms which are far from satisfactory to the
progressives. The Manchu government has followed its traditional
_laissez faire_ policy in the face of foreign aggressions and
threatening dangers of the empire's partition, with no thought of the
morrow. Until now it has been completely blind to the force of the
popular will and has deemed it not worth while to bother with the
common people.

Long ago patriotic Chinese gave up hope in the Manchu government and
realized that China's salvation lay in the taking over of the
management of affairs into their own hands. For over a decade Dr. Sun
Yat-sen and other Chinese of courage and ability, mostly thos