ted by the
scholar Liang Ch'i-chao, a leader of the Chinputang. To this party,
then, though numerically inferior to the Kuo Ming Tang, was due the
honour and credit of re-establishing the Republic, the Kuo Ming Tang
being under a cloud owing to the failure of the Second Revolution of
1913 which it had engineered. Nevertheless, owing to the Kuo Ming Tang
being more genuinely republican, since it was mainly composed of younger
and more modern minds, it was from its ranks that the greatest check to
militarism sprang; and therefore although its work was necessarily
confined to the Council-chamber, its moral influence was very great and
constantly representative of the civilian element as opposed to the
militarist. By staking everything on the necessity of adhering to the
Nanking Provisional Constitution until a permanent instrument was drawn
up, the Kuo Ming Tang rapidly established an ascendancy; for although
the Nanking Constitution had admittedly failed to bring representative
government because of the difficulty of defining powers in such a way as
to make a practical autocracy impossible, it had at least established as
a basic principle that China could no longer be ruled as a family
possession, which in itself marked a great advance on all previous
conceptions. President Li Yuan-hung's policy, in the circumstances, was
to play the part of a moderator and to seek to bring harmony to a mass
of heterogeneous elements that had to carry out the practical work of
government over four hundred millions of people.

His success was at the outset hampered by the appeal the military were
quick in making to a new method--to offset the power of Parliament in
Peking. We have already dealt with the evils of the circular telegram in
China--surely one of the most unexpected results of adapting foreign
inventions to native life. By means of these telegraphic campaigns a
rapid exchange of views is made possible among the provincial governors;
and consequently in the autumn of 1916, inspired by the Military Party,
a wholly illegal Conference of generals was organized by the redoubtable
old General Chang Hsun on the Pukow railway for the purpose of overawing
parliament, and securing that the Military Party retained a controlling
hand behind the scenes. It is perhaps unnecessary to-day to do more than
note the fact that the peace of the country was badly strained by this
procedure; but thanks to moderate counsels and the wisdom of the
Presid