In short, the action taken by Ni Shih-chung and others is nothing short of open rebellion.  From the legal point of view, any suggestion of compromise would be absurd.  It has already been a fatal mistake for the President to have allowed them to do what they like, and if he again yields to their pressure by dissolving Parliament, he will be held responsible, when the righteous troops rise and punish the rebels.  If the President, deceived by ignoble persons, take upon himself to dissolve the assembly, his name will go down in history as one committing high treason against the Government, and the author of the break between the North and the South.  The President has been known as the man by whose hands the Republic was built.  We have special regard for his benevolent character and kind disposition.  We are reluctant to see him intimidated and misled by evil counsels to take a step which will undo all his meritorious services to the county and shatter the unique reputation he has enjoyed.

The unrolling of these dramatic events was the signal for the greatest subterranean activity on the part of the Japanese, who were now everywhere seen rubbing their hands and congratulating themselves on the course history was taking.  General Tanaka, Vice-Chief of the Japanese General Staff, who had been on an extensive tour of inspection in China, so planned as to include every arsenal north of the Yangtsze had arrived at the psychological moment in Peking and was now deeply engaged through Japanese field-officers in the employ of the Chinese Government, in pulling every string and in trying to commit the leaders of this unedifying plot in such a way as to make them puppets of Japan.  The Japanese press, seizing on the American Note of the 5th June as an excuse, had been belabouring the United States for some days for its “interference” in Chinese affairs, and also for having ignored Japan’s “special position” in China, which according to these publicists demanded that no Power take any action in the Far East, or give any advice, without first consulting Japan.  That a stern correction will have to be offered to this presumption as soon as the development of the war permits it is certain.  But not only Japanese military officers and journalists were endlessly busy:  so-called Japanese advisers to the Chinese Government had done their utmost to assist the confusion.  Thus Dr. Ariga, the Constitutional expert, when called in at the last moment for advice by President Li Yuan-hung had flatly contradicted Dr. Morrison, who with an Englishman’s love of justice and constitutionalism had insisted that there was only one thing for the President to do—­to be bound by legality to the last no matter what it might cost him.  Dr. Ariga had falsely stated that the issue was a question of expediency, thus deliberately assisting the forces of disruption.  This is perhaps only what was to be expected of a man who had advised Yuan Shih-kai to make himself Emperor—­knowing full well that he could never succeed and that indeed the whole enterprise from the point of view of Japan was an elaborate trap.