emselves of money-making devices, had not only taken
shelter under this new and imposing edifice, but were rapidly extending
it of their own accord. In brief, the trading Chinese were identifying
themselves and their major interests with the treaty-ports; they were
transferring thither their specie and their credits; making huge
investments in land and properties, under the aegis of foreign flags in
which they absolutely trusted. The money-interests of the country knew
instinctively that the native system was doomed and that with this doom
there would come many changes; these interests, in the way common to
money all the world over, were insuring themselves against the
inevitable.

The force of this--politically--became finally evident in 1911; and what
we have said in our opening sentences should now be clear. The Chinese
Revolution was an emotional rising against the Peking System because it
was a bad and inefficient and retrograde system, just as much as against
the Manchus, who after all had adopted purely Chinese methods and who
were no more foreigners than Scotchmen or Irishmen are foreigners to-day
in England. The Revolution of 1911 derived its meaning and its value--as
well as its mandate--not from what it proclaimed, but for what it stood
for. Historically, 1911 was the lineal descendant of 1900, which again
was the offspring of the economic collapse advertised by the great
foreign loans of the Japanese war, loans made necessary because the
Taipings had disclosed the complete disappearance of the only _raison
d'etre_ of Peking sovereignty, _i.e._ the old-time military power. The
story is, therefore, clear and well-connected and so logical in its
results that it has about it a finality suggesting the unrolling of the
inevitable.

During the Revolution the one decisive factor was shown to be almost at
once--money, nothing but money. The pinch was felt at the end of the
first thirty days. Provincial remittances ceased; the Boxer quotas
remained unpaid; a foreign embargo was laid upon the Customs funds. The
Northern troops, raised and trained by Yuan Shih-kai, when he was
Viceroy of the Metropolitan province, were, it is true, proving
themselves the masters of the Yangtsze and South China troops; yet that
circumstance was meaningless. Those troops were fighting for what had
already proved itself a lost cause--the Peking System, as well as the
Manchu dynasty. The fight turned more and more into a money-fight. It
w