e of technical neutrality would lead nowhere
save possibly to Avernus.

As early as November, 1915, Yuan Shih-kai and his immediate henchmen had
indeed realized the internal advantages to be derived from a formal
war-partnership with the signatories of the Pact of London, the impulse
to the movement being given by certain important shipments of arms and
ammunition from China which were then made. A half-surreptitious
attempt to discuss terms in Peking caused no little excitement, the
matter being, however, only debated in very general terms. The principal
item proposed by the Peking government was characteristically the
stipulation that an immediate loan of two million pounds should be made
to China, in return for her technical belligerency. But when the
proposal was taken to Tokio, Japan rightly saw that its main purpose was
simply to secure an indirect foreign endorsement of Yuan Shih-kai's
candidature as Emperor; and for that reason she threw cold-water on the
whole project. To subscribe to a formula, which besides enthroning Yuan
Shih-kai would have been a grievous blow to her Continental ambitions,
was an unthinkable thing; and therefore the manoeuvre was foredoomed to
failure.

The death of Yuan Shih-kai in the summer of 1916 radically altered the
situation. Powerful influences were again set to work to stamp out the
German cult and to incline the minority of educated men who control the
destinies of the country to see that their real interests could only lie
with the Allies, who were beginning to export Chinese man-power as an
auxiliary war-aid and who were very anxious to place the whole matter on
a sounder footing. Little real progress was, however, made in the face
of the renewed German efforts to swamp the country with their
propaganda. By means of war-maps, printed in English and Chinese, and
also by means of an exhaustive daily telegraphic service which hammered
home every possible fact illustrative of German invincibility, the
German position in China, so far from being weakened, was actually
strengthened during the period when Rumania was being overrun. By a
singular destiny, any one advocating an alliance with the Allies was
bitterly attacked not only by the Germans but by the Japanese as
well--this somewhat naive identification of Japan's political interest
with those of an enemy country being an unique feature of the situation
worthy of permanent record.

It was not until President Wilson sent out h