Period, but chiefly owing to the bait held out by Western Powers,
that extraterritoriality would be abolished when China had reformed
her judicial system, a new Provisional Criminal Code was published. It
substituted death by hanging or strangulation for decapitation, and
imprisonment for various lengths of time for bambooing. It was adopted
in large measure by the Republican _regime_, and is the chief legal
instrument in use at the present time. But close examination reveals
the fact that it is almost an exact copy of the Japanese penal code,
which in turn was modelled upon that of Germany. It is, in fact, a
Western code imitated, and as it stands is quite out of harmony with
present conditions in China. It will have to be modified and recast
to be a suitable, just, and practicable national legal instrument
for the Chinese people. Moreover, it is frequently overridden in a
high-handed manner by the police, who often keep a person acquitted
by the Courts of Justice in custody until they have 'squeezed' him
of all they can hope to get out of him. And it is noteworthy that,
though provision was made in the Draft Code for trial by jury, this
provision never went into effect; and the slavish imitation of alien
methods is shown by the curiously inconsistent reason given--that "the
fact that jury trials have been abolished in Japan is indicative of the
inadvisability of transplanting this Western institution into China!"

Local Government

The central administration being a far-flung network of officialdom,
there was hardly any room for local government apart from it. We
find it only in the village elder and those associated with him, who
took up what government was necessary where the jurisdiction of the
unit of the central administration--the district magistracy--ceased,
or at least did not concern itself in meddling much.

Military System

The peace-loving agricultural settlers in early China had at first
no army. When occasion arose, all the farmers exchanged their
ploughshares for swords and bows and arrows, and went forth to
fight. In the intervals between the harvests, when the fields were
clear, they held manoeuvres and practised the arts of warfare. The
king, who had his Six Armies, under the Six High Nobles, forming
the royal military force, led the troops in person, accompanied by
the spirit-tablets of his ancestors and of the gods of the land and
grain. Chariots, drawn by four horses and containing soldie