s put on
the whole business by the final suggestion that the Constitutional
Government of China under the new empire must be a mixture of the
Prussian and Japanese systems, Yang Tu's last words being that it is
best to be honest with the people!

No more damning indictment of Yuan Shih-kai's regime could possibly have
been penned.

CHAPTER IX

THE MONARCHY PLOT

THE MEMORANDUM OF DR. GOODNOW

Although this extraordinary pamphlet was soon accepted by Chinese
society as a semi-official warning of what was coming, it alone was not
sufficient to launch a movement which to be successful required the
benign endorsement of foreign opinion. The Chinese pamphleteer had dealt
with the emotional side of the case: it was necessary to reinforce his
arguments with an appeal which would be understood by Western statesmen
as well as by Eastern politicians. Yuan Shih-kai, still pretending to
stand aside, had kept his attention concentrated on this very essential
matter; for, as we have repeatedly pointed out, he never failed to
understand the superlative value of foreign support in all his
enterprises,--that support being given an exaggerated value by the
public thanks to China's reliance on foreign money. Accordingly, as if
still unconvinced, he now very naively requested the opinion of his
chief legal adviser, Dr. Goodnow, an American who had been appointed to
his office through the instrumentality of the Board of the Carnegie
Institute as a most competent authority on Administrative Law.

Even in this most serious matter the element of comedy was not lacking.
Dr. Goodnow had by special arrangement returned to Peking at the
psychological moment; for having kicked his heels during many weary
months in the capital, he had been permitted in 1914 to take up the
appointment of President of an American University on condition that he
would be available for legal "advice" whenever wanted. The Summer
vacation gave him the opportunity of revisiting in the capacity of a
transient adviser the scenes of his former idleness; and the
holiday-task set him by his large-hearted patron was to prove in as few
folios as possible that China ought to be a Monarchy and not a
Republic--a theme on which every schoolboy could no doubt write with
fluency. Consequently Dr. Goodnow, arming himself with a limited amount
of paper and ink, produced in very few days the Memorandum which
follows,--a document which it is difficult to speak of dispassion