The scheme now adopted by the Senate was to cause the provinces to flood Peking with petitions, sent up through the agency of “The Society for the Preservation of Peace,” demanding that the Republic be replaced by that form of government which the people alone understood, the name Constitutional Monarchy being selected merely as a piece of political window-dressing to please the foreign world.  A vast amount of organizing had to be done behind the scenes before the preliminaries were completed:  but on the 6th October the scheme was so far advanced that in response to “hosts of petitions” the Senate, sitting in its capacity of Legislative Chamber (Li Fa Yuan) passed a so-called King-making bill in which elaborate regulations were adopted for referring the question under discussion to a provincial referendum.  According to this naive document the provinces were to be organized into electoral colleges, and the votes of the electors, after being recorded, were to be sent up to Peking for scrutiny.  Some attempt was made to follow Dr. Goodnow’s advice to secure as far as possible that the various classes of the community should be specially represented:  and provision was therefore made in the voting for the inclusion of “learned scholars,” Chambers of Commerce, and “oversea merchants,” whose votes were to be directly recorded by their special delegates.  To secure uniformly satisfactory results, the whole election was placed absolutely and without restriction in the hands of the high provincial authorities, who were invited to bestow on the matter their most earnest attention.

[Illustration:  Modern Peking:  The Palace Entrance lined with Troops.  Note the New-type Chinese Policeman in foreground.]

[Illustration:  The Premier General Tuan Chi-jui, Head of the Cabinet which decided to declare war on Germany.]

In a Mandate, issued in response to this Bill, Yuan Shih-kai merely limits himself to handing over the control of the elections and voting to the local authorities, safe in the knowledge that every detail of the plot had been carefully worked out in advance.  By this time the fact that a serious and dangerous movement was being actively pushed had been well-impressed on the Peking Legations, and some anxiety was publicly manifested.  It was known that Japan, as the active enemy of Yuan Shih-kai, could not remain permanently silent:  and on the 28th October in association with Great Britain and Russia, she indeed made official inquiries at the Chinese Foreign Office regarding the meaning of the movement.  She was careful, however, to declare that it was her solicitude for the general peace that alone dictated her action.[18] Nevertheless, her warning had an unmistakable note about it and occasioned grave anxiety, since the ultimatum of the previous May in connection with the Twenty-one Demands had not been forgotten.  At the beginning of November the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, replying verbally to these representations, alleged that the