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.

The provincial response to the action taken on the 13th June became what every one had expected:  the Southwestern group of provinces, with their military headquarters at Canton, began openly concerting measures to resist not the authority of the President, who was recognized as a just man surrounded by evil-minded persons who never hesitated to betray him, but to destroy the usurping generals and the corrupt camarilla behind them; whilst the Yangtsze provinces, with their headquarters at Nanking, which had hitherto been pledged to “neutrality,” began secretly exchanging views with the genuinely Republican South.  The group of Tientsin generals and “politicals,” confused by these developments, remained inactive; and this was no doubt responsible for the mad coup attempted by the semi-illiterate General Chang Hsun.  In the small hours of July 1st General Chang Hsun, relying on the disorganization in the capital which we have dealt with in our preceding account, entered the Imperial City with his troops by prearrangement with the Imperial Family and at 4 o’clock on the morning of the 1st July the Manchu boy-emperor Hsuan Tung, who lost the Throne on the 12th February, 1912, was enthroned before a small assembly of Manchu nobles, courtiers and sycophantic Chinese.  The capital woke up to find military patrols everywhere and to hear incredulously that