ent no open breach occurred and there is reason to believe that
this experiment will not be repeated,--at least not in the same way.[21]

The difficulty to be solved is of an unique nature. It is not that the
generals and the Military Party are necessarily reactionary: it is that,
not belonging to the intellectual-literary portion of the ruling
elements, they are less advanced and less accustomed to foreign ways,
and therefore more in touch with the older China which lingers on in the
vast agricultural districts, and in all those myriad of townships which
are dotted far and wide across the provinces to the confines of Central
Asia. Naturally it is hard for a class of men who hold the balance of
power and carry on much of the actual work of governing to submit to the
paper decrees of an institution they do not accept as being responsible
and representative: but many indications are available that when a
Permanent Constitution has been promulgated, and made an article of
faith in all the schools, a change for the better will come and the old
antagonisms gradually disappear.

It is on this Constitution that Parliament has been at work ever since
it re-assembled in August, 1916, and which is now practically completed.
Sitting together three times a week as a National Convention, the two
Houses have subjected the Draft Constitution (which was prepared by a
Special Parliamentary Drafting Committee) to a very exhaustive
examination and discussion. Many violent scenes have naturally marked
the progress of this important work, the two great parties, the Kuo Ming
Tang and the Chinputang, coming to loggerheads again and again. But in
the main the debates and the decisions arrived at have been satisfactory
and important, because they have tended to express in a concrete and
indisputable form the present state of the Chinese mind and its immense
underlying commonsense. Remarkable discussions and fierce enmities, for
instance, marked the final decision not to make the Confucian cult the
State Religion; but there is not the slightest doubt that in formally
registering this veritable revolution in the secret stronghold of
Chinese political thought, a Bastille has been overthrown and the
ground left clear for the development of individualism and personal
responsibility in a way which was impossible under the leaden formulae
of the greatest of the Chinese sages. In defining the relationship which
must exist between the Central Government