had brought about. Yuan Shih-kai knew that the Boxers had
been theoretically correct in selecting as they first did the watchword
which they had first placed on their banners--"blot out the Manchus and
all foreign things." Both had sapped the old civilization to its
foundations. But the programme they had proposed was idealistic, not
practical. One element could be cleared away--the other had to be
endured. Had the Boxers been sensible they would have modified their
programme to the extent of protecting the foreigners, whilst they
assailed the Dynasty which had brought them so low. The Court Party, as
we have said, seduced their leaders to acting in precisely the reverse
sense.

Yuan Shih-kai was neither a Boxer, nor yet a believer in idealistic
foolishness. He had realized that the essence of successful rule in the
China of the Twentieth Century was to support the foreign point of
view--nominally at least--because foreigners disposed of unlimited
monetary resources, and had science on their side. He knew that so long
as he did not openly flout foreign opinion by indulging in bare-faced
assassinations, he would be supported owing to the international
reputation he had established in 1900. Arguing from these premises, his
instinct also told him that an appearance of legality must always be
sedulously preserved and the aspirations of the nation nominally
satisfied. For this reason he arranged matters in such a manner as to
appear always as the instrument of fate. For this reason, although he
destroyed the revolutionists on the mid-Yangtsze, to equalize matters,
on the lower Yangtsze he secretly ordered the evacuation of Nanking by
the Imperialist forces so that he might have a tangible argument with
which to convince the Manchus regarding the root and branch reform which
he knew was necessary. That reform had been accepted in principle by the
Throne when it agreed to the so-called Nineteen Fundamental Articles, a
corpus of demands which all the Northern Generals had endorsed and had
indeed insisted should be the basis of government before they would
fight the rebellious South in 1911. There is reason to believe that
provided he had been made _de facto_ Regent, Yuan Shih-kai would have
supported to the end a Manchu Monarchy. But the surprising swiftness of
the Revolutionary Party's action in proclaiming the Republic at Nanking
on the 1st January, 1912, and the support which foreign opinion gave
that venture confused him. H