e with a
Western education, have been busily engaged in secretly preaching
revolutionary doctrines among their fellow countrymen and preparing for
a general outbreak. They collected numerous followers and a large sum
of money. The revolutionary propaganda was being spread country-wide,
among the gentry and soldiers, and even among enlightened government
officials, in spite of governmental persecution and strict vigilance.
Revolutionary literature was being widely circulated, notwithstanding
the rigid official censorship.

Added to all this are the ever important economic causes. Famines and
floods in recent years have greatly intensified the already strong
feeling of discontent and unrest, and served to pile up more fuel for
the general conflagration.

In short, the whole nation was like a forest of dry leaves which needed
but a single fire spark to make it blaze. Hence, when the revolution
broke out on the memorable 10th of October, 1911, at Wu-Chang, it
spread like a forest fire. Within the short period of two weeks
fourteen of the eighteen provinces of China proper joined in the
movement one after another with amazing rapidity. Everywhere people
welcomed the advent of the revolutionary army as the drought-stricken
would rejoice at the coming rain, or the hungry at the sight of food.
The great wave of democratic sentiment which had swept over Europe,
America, and the islands of Japan at last reached the Chinese shore,
and is now rolling along resistlessly over the immense empire toward
its final goal--a world-wide democracy.

A STEP TOWARD WORLD PEACE

THE UNITED STATES ARBITRATION TREATIES A.D. 1912

HON. WILLIAM H. TAFT

Later generations will doubtless note, as one of the main
manifestations of our present age, its progress in international
arbitration, in the substitution of justice for force as the means of
deciding disputes between nations. On March 7, 1912, the United States
Senate, after months of argument, finally agreed to ratify two
arbitration treaties which President Taft had arranged with England and
France. True, the Senate, before thus establishing the treaties, struck
out their most far-reaching article, an agreement that every
disagreement whatsoever should be referred to a Joint High Commission.
Without this clause the treaties still leave a bare possibility of
warfare over questions of "national honor" or "national policy"; but
practically they put an end to war forever as between the