n Infantry Division

Modern Peking: The Palace Entrance lined with Troops. Note the New
Type Chinese Policeman in the foreground

The Premier General Tuan Chi-Jui, Head of the Cabinet which decided to
declare war on Germany General Feng Kuo-chang, President of the
Republic The Scholar Liang Chi-chao, sometime Minister of Justice, and
the foremost "Brain" in China

General Tsao-ao, the Hero of the Yunnan Rebellion of 1915-16, who died
from the effects of the campaign

Liang Shih-yi, who was the Power behind Yuan Shih-kai, now proscribed
and living in exile at Hong-Kong

The Famous or Infamous General Chang Hsun, the leading Reactionary in
China to-day, who still commands a force of 30,000 men astride of the
Pukow Railway

The Bas-relief in a Peking Temple, well illustrating Indo-Chinese
Influences

The Late President Yuan Shih-kai

President Yuan Shih-kai photographed immediately after his
Inauguration as Provisional President, March 10th, 1912

The National Assembly sitting as a National Convention engaged on the
Draft of the Permanent Constitution. (Specially photographed by
permission of the Speakers for the Present Work)

View from rear of the Hall of the National Assembly sitting as a
National Convention engaged on the Draft of the Permanent
Constitution. (Specially photographed by permission of the Speakers
for the Present Work)

CHAPTER I

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

The revolution which broke out in China on the 10th October, 1911, and
which was completed with the abdication of the Manchu Dynasty on the
12th February, 1912, though acclaimed as highly successful, was in its
practical aspects something very different. With the proclamation of the
Republic, the fiction of autocratic rule had truly enough vanished; yet
the tradition survived and with it sufficient of the essential machinery
of Imperialism to defeat the nominal victors until the death of Yuan
Shih-kai.

The movement to expel the Manchus, who had seized the Dragon Throne in
1644 from the expiring Ming Dynasty, was an old one. Historians are
silent on the subject of the various secret plots which were always
being hatched to achieve that end, their silence being due to a lack of
proper records and to the difficulty of establishing the simple truth in
a country where rumour reigns supreme. But there is little doubt that
the famous Ko-lao-hui, a Secret Society with its headquarters in