alcitrant Military Governors, one General Ni
Shih-chung of Anhui, history would have been very different and China
spared much national and international humiliation. Six years of stormy
happenings had certainly bred in the nation a desire for
constitutionalism and a detestation of military domination. But this
desire and detestation required firm leadership. Without that leadership
it was inchoate and powerless, and indeed made furtive by the constant
fear of savage reprisals. A great opportunity had come and a great
opportunity had been lost. President Li Yuan-hung's personal argument,
communicated to the writer, was that in sealing the Mandate dissolving
Parliament he had chosen the lesser of two evils, for although South
China and the Chinese Navy declared they would defend Parliament to the
last, they were far away whilst large armies were echeloned along the
railways leading into Peking and daily threatening action. The events of
the next year or so must prove conclusively, in spite of what has
happened in this month of June, 1917, that the corrupt power of the
sword can no longer even nominally rule China.

[Illustration: The Late President Yuan Shih-kai]

[Illustration: President Yuan Shi-kai photographed immediately after his
Inauguration as Provisional President, March 10th, 1912.]

Meanwhile the veteran Dr. Wu Ting-fang, true to his faith, declared that
no power on earth would cause him to sign a Mandate possessing no
legality behind it; and he indeed obstinately resisted every attempt to
seduce him. Although his resignation was refused he stood his ground
manfully, and it became clear that some other expedient would have to be
resorted to. In the small hours of the 13th June what this was was made
clear: by a rapid reshuffling of the cards Dr. Wu Ting-fang's
resignation was accepted and the general officer commanding the Peking
Gendarmerie, a genial soul named General Chiang Chao-tsung, who had
survived unscathed the vicissitudes of six years of revolution, was
appointed to act in his stead and duly counter-signed the fateful
Mandate which was at once printed and promulgated at four o'clock in the
morning. It has been stated to the writer that had it not been so issued
four battalions of Chang Hsun's savage pigtailed soldiery, who had been
bivouacked for some days in the grounds of the Temple of Heaven, would
have been let loose on the capital. The actual text of the Mandate
proves conclusively that the Pr