ithin very few
days the Throne reluctantly decreed its own abdication in three
extremely curious Edicts which are worthy of study in the appendix. They
prove conclusively that the Imperial Family believed that it was only
abdicating its political power, whilst retaining all ancient ceremonial
rights and titles. Plainly the conception of a Republic, or a People's
Government, as it was termed in the native ideographs, was
unintelligible to Peking.

Yuan Shih-kai had now won everything he wished for. By securing that the
Imperial Commission to organize the Republic and re-unite the warring
sections was placed solely in his hands, he prepared to give a type of
Government about which he knew nothing a trial. It is interesting to
note that he held to the very end of his life that he derived his powers
solely from the Last Edicts, and in nowise from his compact with the
Nanking Republic which had instituted the so-called Provisional
Constitution. He was careful, however, not to lay this down
categorically until many months later, when his dictatorship seemed
undisputed. But from the day of the Manchu Abdication almost, he was
constantly engaged in calculating whether he dared risk everything on
one throw of the dice and ascend the Throne himself; and it is precisely
this which imparts such dramatic interest to the astounding story which
follows.

CHAPTER III

THE DREAM REPUBLIC

(FROM THE 1st JANUARY, 1912, TO THE DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT)

To describe briefly and intelligibly the series of transactions from the
1st January, 1912, when the Republic was proclaimed at Nanking by a
handful of provincial delegates, and Dr. Sun Yat Sen elected Provisional
President, to the _coup d'etat_ of 4th November, 1913, when Yuan
Shih-kai, elected full President a few weeks previously, after having
acted as Chief Executive for twenty months, boldly broke up Parliament
and made himself _de facto_ Dictator of China, is a matter of
extraordinary difficulty.

All through this important period of Chinese history one has the
impression that one is in dreamland and that fleeting emotions take the
place of more solid things. Plot and counter-plot follow one another so
rapidly that an accurate record of them all would be as wearisome as the
Book of Chronicles itself; whilst the amazing web of financial intrigue
which binds the whole together is so complex--and at the same time so
antithetical to the political struggle--that the two st