indicates. But even if Wu Pei Fu follows precedent and goes
bad, he will only hasten his own final end. This is not prophecy. It
is only a statement of what has uniformly happened in China just at
the moment a military leader seemed to have complete power in his
grasp. In other words, a victory for Wu Pei Fu may either accelerate
or may retard the development of provincial autonomy according to the
course he pursues. It cannot permanently prevent or deflect it.

The basic factor that makes one sure that this trend toward local
autonomy is a reality and not merely one of those meaningless
shiftings of power which confuse the observer, is that it is in accord
with Chinese temperament, tradition and circumstance. Feudalism is
past and gone two thousand years ago, and at no period since has China
possessed a working centralized government. The absolute empires which
have come and gone in the last two millenniums existed by virtue of
non-interference and a religious aura. The latter can never be
restored; and every episode of the republic demonstrates that China
with its vast and diversified territories, its population of between
three hundred and fifty and four hundred million, its multitude of
languages and lack of communications, its enormous local attachments
sanctified by the family system and ancestral worship, cannot be
managed from a single and remote centre. China rests upon a network of
local and voluntary associations cemented by custom. This fact has
given it its unparallelled stability and its power to progress even
under the disturbed political conditions of the past ten years. I
sometimes think that Americans with their own traditional contempt for
politics and their spontaneous reliance upon self-help and local
organization are the ones who are naturally fitted to understand
China's course. The Japanese with their ingrained reliance upon the
state have continually misjudged and misacted. The British understand
better than we do the significance of local self-government; but they
are misled by their reverence for politics so that they cannot readily
find or see government when it does not take political form.

It is not too much to say that one great cause for the overthrow of
the Manchus was the fact that because of the pressure of international
relations they attempted to force, especially in fiscal matters, a
centralization upon the provinces wholly foreign to the spirit of the
people. This created hostili