What obligations had I to the then Imperial House?  Did it not heap persecution and humiliation on me to the utmost of its power and resources?  I would have been an exile even to this day had it not been for the Revolution.  Further, I was no child and I was fully aware of the disappointment which the then Government caused in the minds of the people.  Yet I risked the opposition of the whole country and attempted to prolong the life of the dying dynasty.  I had no other view in mind except that there would be some possibility of our hope being realized if the whole nation would unite in efforts to improve the administration under the then existing form of government.  I believed that because the people were not educated for a change.  But if the status of the country should be changed before the people are educated and accustomed to the new order of things, the danger and hardship during the transitional period of several years would be incalculable.  In certain circumstances this might lead to the destruction of the nation.  Even if we are spared the tragedy of national extinction, the losses sustained by the retarding of the progress of the administration would be unredeemable.  It is painful to recall past experiences; but if my readers will read once more my articles in the Hsin Mim Tung Pao during the years 1905 and 1906 they will see that all the sufferings which the Republic has experienced bear out the predictions made then.  The different stages of the sinister development have been unfolding themselves one by one just as I said they would.  It was unfortunate that my words were not heeded although I wept and pleaded.  Such has been the consequence of the change of the state of the country—­a change of Kuo-ti.

Yet before we have hardly ceased panting, this talk of a second change is on us.  I am not in a position to say exactly how this talk had its beginning.  Ostensibly it was started by the remarks of Dr. Goodnow.  But I am unable to say whether Dr. Goodnow actually gave out such a view or for what purpose he expressed such a view.  From what he told the representative of a Peking newspaper he never expressed the views attributed to him.  Be this as it may, I cannot help having my doubts.  All Dr. Goodnow is alleged to have said bearing on the merits of the monarchical and republican system of government as an abstract subject of discussion, such as the necessity of the form of state (Kuo-ti) being suited to the general conditions of the country and the lessons we should learn from the Central and South American republics, are really points of a very simple nature and easily deduced.  How strange that among all this large number of politicians and scholars, who are as numerous as the trees in the forest and the perch in the stream, should have failed for all these years to notice these simple points; and now suddenly make a fetish of them because they have come out of the mouth of a foreigner.  Is it because no one except a foreign doctor can discover