Yuan Shih-kai coup d’etat of 4th November, 1913.  Thus we had this double paradox; on the one hand the Chinese people awkwardly trying to be western in a Chinese way and failing:  on the other, foreign officials and foreign governments trying to be Chinese and making the confusion worse confounded.  It was inevitable in such circumstances that the history of the past six years should have been the history of a slow tragedy, and that almost every page should be written over with the name of the man who was the selected bailiff of the Powers—­Yuan Shih-kai.

CHAPTER II

THE ENIGMA OF YUAN SHIH-KAI

The history of the man from the opening of his career in Korea, in 1882 to the end of the revolution, 12th February, 1912

Yuan Shih-kai’s career falls into two clear-cut parts, almost as if it had been specially arranged for the biographer; there is the probationary period in Korea, and the executive in North China.  The first is important only because of the moulding-power which early influences exerted on the man’s character; but it is interesting in another way since it affords glimpses of the sort of things which affected this leader’s imagination throughout his life and finally brought him to irretrievable ruin.  The second period is choke-full of action; and over every chapter one can see the ominous point of interrogation which was finally answered in his tragic political and physical collapse.

Yuan Shih-kai’s origin, without being precisely obscure, is unimportant.  He came of a Honanese family who were nothing more distinguished than farmers possessing a certain amount of land, but not too much of the world’s possessions.  The boy probably ran wild in the field at an age when the sons of high officials and literati were already pale and anaemic from overmuch study.  To some such cause the man undoubtedly owed his powerful physique, his remarkable appetite, his general roughness.  Native biographers state that as a youth he failed to pass his hsiu-tsai examinations—­the lowest civil service degree—­because he had spent too much time in riding and boxing and fencing.  An uncle in official life early took charge of him; and when this relative died the young man displayed filial piety in accompanying the corpse back to the family graves and in otherwise manifesting grief.  Through official connections a place was subsequently found for him in that public department under the Manchus which may be called the military intendancy, and it was through this branch of the civil service that he rose to power.  Properly speaking Yuan Shih-kai was never an army-officer; he was a military official—­ his highest rank later on being that of military judge, or better, Judicial Commissioner.