All these reasonable plans were knocked on the head on Sunday, the 10th June, by the sudden report that the President having been peremptorily told that the dissolution of Parliament was the sole means of saving the Republic and preventing the sack of Peking, as well as an open armed attempt to restore the boy-emperor Hsuan Tung, had at last made up his mind to surrender to the inevitable.  He had sealed a Mandate decreeing the dissolution of Parliament which would be promulgated as soon as it had received the counter-signature of the acting Premier, Dr. Wu Ting-fang, such counter-signature being obligatory under Article 45 of the Provisional Constitution.

At once it became clear again, as happens a thousand times during every year in the East, that what is not nipped in the bud grows with such malignant swiftness as finally to blight all honest intentions.  Had steps been taken on or about the 23rd May to detain forcibly in Peking the ringleader of the recalcitrant 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