It is useless, however, to pursue the subject:  we have said enough to disclose the utter levity of those who should have realized from the first that the New China is a matter of life and death to the people, and that the first business of the foreigner is to uphold the new beliefs.  The Goodnow Memorandum, immediately it was published, was put to precisely those base uses which any one with an elementary knowledge of China might have foreseen:  it was simply exploited in an unscrupulous way, its recommendations being carried out in such a manner as to increase one’s contempt for the men who were pushing the monarchist plot with any means that they could seize hold of, and who were not averse from making responsible foreigners their tools.

CHAPTER X

THE MONARCHY MOVEMENT IS OPPOSED

THE APPEAL OF THE SCHOLAR LIANG CH’I-CHAO

We have already referred in several places to the extraordinary role scholarship and the literary appeal play in the governance of China.  It is necessary to go back to the times of the birth of the Roman Empire, and to invoke the great figure of Cicero, to understand how greatly the voice of men of recognized intellectual qualities influences the nation.  Liang Ch’i-chao, a man of some forty-five years, had long been distinguished for his literary attainments and for the skill with which, though unversed in any Western language, he had expounded the European theory and practice of government to his fellow-countrymen.  To his brain is due the coining of many exact expressions necessary for parliamentary government, his mentality having grown with the modern growth of China and adapted itself rather marvellously to the requirements of the Twentieth Century.  A reformer of 1898—­ that is one of the small devoted band of men who under Kang Yu Wei almost succeeded in winning over the ill-fated Emperor Kwang Hsu to carrying out a policy of modernizing the country in the teeth of fierce mandarin opposition, he possessed in his armoury every possible argument against the usurpation Yuan Shih-kai proposed to practise.  He knew precisely where to strike—­and with what strength; and he delivered himself over to his task with whole-hearted fervour.  It having become known that he was engaged in preparing this brief for the people of China, every influence was brought to bear to prevent such a disastrous publication.  Influential deputations were sent to him to implore him to remember the parlous international situation China found herself in,—­a situation which would result in open disaster if subjected to the strain of further discords.  For a time he hesitated launching his counter-stroke.  But at length the Republican Party persuaded him to deal the tyrant the needed blow; and his now famous accusation of the Chief Executive was published.