the Chinese have never had the need for such supernatural
restraints exercised by a privileged body, and secondly, that they are
absolutely without any feeling of class or caste--prince and pauper
meeting on terms of frank and humorous equality--the race thus being the
only pure and untinctured democracy the world has ever known.

[4] (a) This loan was the so-called 7 per cent. Silver loan of 1894 for
Shanghai Taels 10,000,000 negotiated by the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank. It
was followed in 1895 by a L3,000,000 Gold 6 per cent. Loan, then by two
more 6 per cent. loans for a million each in the same year, making a
total of L6,635,000 sterling for the bare war-expenses. The Japanese war
indemnity raised in three successive issues--from 1895 to 1898--of
L16,000,000 each, added L48,000,000. Thus the Korean imbroglio cost
China nearly 55 millions sterling. As the purchasing power of the
sovereign is eight times larger in China than in Europe, this debt
economically would mean 440 millions in England--say nearly double what
the ruinous South African war cost. It is by such methods of comparison
that the vital nature of the economic factor in recent Chinese history
is made clear.

[5] There is no doubt that the so-called Belgian loan, L1,800,000 of
which was paid over in cash at the beginning of 1912, was the instrument
which brought every one to terms.

CHAPTER II

THE ENIGMA OF YUAN SHIH-KAI

THE HISTORY OF THE MAN FROM THE OPENING OF HIS CAREER IN KOREA IN 1882
TO THE END OF THE REVOLUTION, 12TH FEBRUARY, 1912

Yuan Shih-kai's career falls into two clear-cut parts, almost as if it
had been specially arranged for the biographer; there is the
probationary period in Korea, and the executive in North China. The
first is important only because of the moulding-power which early
influences exerted on the man's character; but it is interesting in
another way since it affords glimpses of the sort of things which
affected this leader's imagination throughout his life and finally
brought him to irretrievable ruin. The second-period is choke-full of
action; and over every chapter one can see the ominous point of
interrogation which was finally answered in his tragic political and
physical collapse.

Yuan Shih-kai's origin, without being precisely obscure, is unimportant.
He came of a Honanese family who were nothing more distinguished than
farmers possessing a certain amount of land, but not too much of the
world's posse