to be granted infringed upon China’s sovereign rights.  Otherwise there was nothing but a tacit endorsement of the very policy which has been tearing the entrails out of Europe—­namely militarism.  That was the fine fruit which was offered to a hopeful nation—­something that would wither on the branch or poison the people as they plucked it.  They were taught to believe that political instinct was the ability to misrepresent in a convincing way the actions and arguments of your opponents and to profit by their mistakes—­not that it is a mighty impulse which can re-make nations.  The Republic was declared by the actions of Western bureaucrats to be a Republic pour rire, not a serious thing; and by this false and cruel assumption they killed Yuan Shih-kai.

If that epitaph is written on his political tombstone, it will be as full of blinding truth as is only possible with Last Things.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NEW REGIME,—­FROM 1916 TO 1917

Within an hour of the death of Yuan Shih-kai, the veteran General Tuan Chi-jui, in his capacity of Secretary of State, had called on Vice-President Li Yuan-hung—­the man whom years before he had been sent to the Yangtsze to bring captive to Peking—­and welcomed him as President of the Republic.  At one o’clock on the same day the Ministers of the Allied Powers who had hastily assembled at the Waichiaopu (Foreign Office), were informed that General Li Yuan-hung had duly assumed office and that the peace and security of the capital were fully guaranteed.  No unrest of any sort need be apprehended; for whilst rumours would no doubt circulate wildly as soon as the populace realized the tragic nature of the climax which had come, the Gendarmerie Corps and the Metropolitan Police —­two forces that numbered 18,000 armed men—­were taking every possible precaution.

In spite of these assurances great uneasiness was felt.  The foreign Legations, which are very imperfectly informed regarding Chinese affairs although living in the midst of them, could not be convinced that internal peace could be so suddenly attained after five years of such fierce rivalries.  Among the many gloomy predictions made at the time, the most common to fall from the lips of Foreign Plenipotentiaries was the remark that the Japanese would be in full occupation of the country within three months—­ the one effective barrier to their advance having been removed.  No better illustration could be given of the inadequate grasp of politics possessed by those whose peculiar business it should be to become expert in the science of cause and effect.  In China, as in the Balkans, professional diplomacy errs so constantly because it has in the main neither the desire nor the training to study dispassionately from day to day all those complex phenomena which go to make up modern nationalism.  Guided in its conduct almost entirely by a policy of personal predilections,