mptorily ordered the signature of the great Reorganization Loan of
L25,000,000 which had been secretly under negotiation all winter with
the financial agents of six Powers[8], although the rupture which had
come in the previous June as a forerunner to the Crisp loan had caused
the general public to lose sight of the supreme importance of the
financial factor. Parliament, seeing that apart from the possibility of
a Foreign Debt Commission being created something after the Turkish and
Egyptian models, a direct challenge to its existence had been offered,
raged and stormed and did its utmost to delay the question; but the
Chief Executive having made up his mind shut himself up in his Palace
and absolutely refused to see any Parliamentary representatives.
Although the Minister of Finance himself hesitated to complete the
transaction in the face of the rising storm and actually fled the
capital, he was brought back by special train and forced to complete the
agreement. At four o'clock in the morning on the 25th April the last
documents were signed in the building of a foreign bank and the Finance
Minister, galloping his carriage suddenly out of the compound to avoid
possible bombs, reported to his master that at last--in spite of the
nominal foreign control which was to govern the disbursement--a vast sum
was at his disposal to further his own ends.

Safe in the knowledge that possession is nine points of the law, Yuan
Shih-kai now treated with derision the resolutions which Parliament
passed that the transaction was illegal and the loan agreement null and
void. Being openly backed by the agents of the Foreign Powers, he
immediately received large cash advances which enabled him to extend his
power in so many directions that further argument with him seemed
useless. It is necessary to record that the Parliamentary leaders had
almost gone down on their knees to certain of the foreign Ministers in
Peking in a vain attempt to persuade them to delay--as they could very
well have done--the signature of this vital Agreement for forty-eight
hours so that it could be formally passed by the National Assembly, and
thus save the vital portion of the sovereignty of the country from
passing under the heel of one man. But Peking diplomacy is a perverse
and disagreeable thing; and the Foreign Ministers of those days,
although accredited to a government which while it had not then been
formally recognized as a Republic by any Power save the