h raged was suddenly terminated on the night of the
29th February (1912) when without any warning there occurred the
extraordinary revolt of the 3rd Division, a picked Northern corps who
for forty-eight hours plundered and burnt portions of the capital
without any attempts at interference, there being little doubt to-day
that this manoeuvre was deliberately arranged as a means of intimidation
by Yuan Shih-kai himself. Although the disorders assumed such dimensions
that foreign intervention was narrowly escaped, the upshot was that the
Nanking Delegates were completely cowed and willing to forget all about
forcing the despot of Peking to proceed to the Southern capital. Yuan
Shih-kai as the man of the hour was enabled on the 10th March, 1912, to
take his oath in Peking as he had wished thus securing full freedom of
action during the succeeding years.[6]

[Illustration: An Encampment of "The Punitive Expedition" of 1910 on the
Upper Yangtsze.

_By courtesy of Major Isaac Newell, U.S. Military Attache_.]

[Illustration: Revival of the Imperialistic Worship of Heaven by Yuan
Shih-kai in 1914: Scene on the Altar of Heaven, with Sacrificial
Officers clothed in costumes dating from 2,000 years ago.]

[Illustration: A Manchu Country Fair: The figures in the foreground are
all Manchu women and girls.]

[Illustration: A Manchu Woman grinding Grain.]

It was on this astounding basis--by means of an organized revolt--that
the Central Government was reorganized; and every act that followed
bears the mark of its tainted parentage. Accepting readily as his
Ministers in the more unimportant government Departments the nominees of
the Southern Confederacy (which was now formally dissolved), Yuan
Shih-kai was careful to reserve for his own men everything that
concerned the control of the army and the police, as well as the
all-important ministry of finance. The framework having been thus
erected, attention was almost immediately concentrated on the problem of
finding money, an amazing matter which would weary the stoutest reader
if given in all its detail but which being part and parcel of the
general problem must be referred to.

Certain essential features can be very rapidly exposed. We have already
made clear the purely economic nature of the forces which had sapped the
foundations of Chinese society. Primarily it had been the disastrous
nature of Chinese gold-indebtedness which had given the new ideas the
force they required t