rose rapidly, finally attaining to the post of Assistant Amban in Thibet. In 1908 he was actively concerned in the intrigues at Peking which led to the removal from the Minister of Communications of T'ang Shao-yi (by far the ablest and most disinterested patriot of my acquaintance in China), and earned for himself in consequence a somewhat unenviable reputation amongst Cantonese of the better class.

I need not refer at any length to that other group of Cantonese reformers, the followers of K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Chi-ch'ao, and supporters of the orthodox principle of a reformed and united Monarchy, because, for the time being, their opinions no longer carry much weight-their voices have been drowned in the shouting of the Republican vanguard. But they will be heard from again, when the present tumult has passed.

Such then is the movement, which, at a moment of complete disorganisation, has arisen almost accidentally, to sway the destinies of the Chinese people. If my judgment of their capacities and tendencies is correct, they offer no hope of permanent escape from the many and grave dangers which threaten this ancient race-no solution of the most momentous of all the problems with which humanity is to-day confronted. With their grievances and their aspirations we may well sympathise, but knowledge of their limitations and of the country's needs, lead us inevitably to the conclusion, confirmed by all the teachings of history, that it will not be by the turbulent iconoclasm of Young China that this people shall be saved. If self-government, as we understand the term, is to exist in China, it must come by slow and difficult processes of evolution and education, inspired and organised by an influential and self-respecting middle class which shall gradually modify the thoughts and habits of the masses. As matters stand to-day these masses are not sufficiently homogeneous to make the formula of a Republic in any sense applicable to them. And the geographial and political situation of the country does not permit of the idea of a military régime such as that by which Diaz governed the Republic of Mexico.

It may perhaps be asked how it comes to pass if, as I have said, the Republican programme in China is pernicious and dangerous nonsense, and the vain imagining of a comparatively insignificant minority, that the opinion of foreigners in China

and the attitude of the Powers have hitherto been so generally sympathetic to the insurrectionary movement? The explanation, like the question itself, is complex. First of all, there is no doubt that distrust at the corruption and inefficiency of the Manchus led foreigners as well as Chinese to look for some sort of improvement from their removal, the general feeling being that, as things could not well be worse, any change must be for the better. It must also be observed that, as far as the average Anglo-Saxon in China is concerned, very few with the exception of officials and missionaries concern themselves closely with the internal politics and party factions of the Chinese, except in so far as they directly affect trade. The language difficulty, and the unseen social barriers which divide East from West, leave the average European of the Treaty Ports in easy-going gnorance of the strength and direction of the forces at work all around him. He is content, as a rule, to trade and to play, and to take the Chinese, their rebellions, politics, and permanent arrest for granted. Add to this the instinctive sympathy of the Anglo-Saxon for the under-dog, and a general consensus of opinion that trade stands to gain by the passing of the Mandarin system, and the result will fairly represent, I believe, the attitude of the mercantile community. Behind this, perhaps no less important, are certain motives of expediency, not to say of selfpreservation. It is to be borne in mind that the public opinion of foreigners in China originates almost entirely at the Treaty Ports, and that these Settlements are at the same time the breeding-place and stamping-grounds of Young China. Now, amidst all the welter and confusion of the crisis, Young China has hitherto displayed a somewhat remarkable capacity to ntrol the disciplined troops of the insurrectionary party, by Deans of its close affiliation and influence with their foreign filled officers, and it has, moreover, clearly intimated that upon ts future goodwill depend the lives and property of Europeans the interior. The protective value of that goodwill, hitherto hown to foreigners as the price of non-intervention, is undeniable, and it is therefore natural enough that the sympathies of Europeans should be displayed on the side of the insurrection. Sf-preservation alone, without looking for interested motives, would commend that course to every merchant and missionary

at the Treaty Ports and in the provinces. But the missionaries have other good reasons for sympathising with Young China. In the first place, much of the Western learning, which is the hall-mark of the revolutionary, has been acquired in Mission schools, the American-educated celestial youth being particularly cocksure of his views on the rights of man in general and his own in particular. Then, too, the Republican party makes a forcible appeal to the sympathies of the missionary world in view of the fact that its first President Elect, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, professes Christianity-there is no limit to the pious hopes that may be, and are, founded on this auspicious fact. And yet, for any one who has a taste for history, there is something ominously reminiscent of the Taiping Rebellion in this association of Christianity with the beginnings of the Republican movement. The picture of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, Christian President of the Chinese Republic at Nanking, surrounded by Japanese advisers, students and generals, irresistibly brings back to mind that tinsel court of the Heavenly King at Nanking forty-eight years ago. Absit omen!

The sympathy of Protestant missionaries for the new dispensation is, however, general and sincere, and it finds its natural reflection in the foreign newspapers of Shanghai and the Treaty Ports, for the reason that most of their correspondents in the interior are necessarily missionaries. Apart from this, however, the mercantile community's opinions, as expressed in these newspapers, were at first unanimously in favour of the party which had so long proclaimed in vain its desire for reform; moreover, there is always something that appeals to human nature in the idea of shouting "Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!" But already there are signs of reaction. The prevalence of the anarchist and dynamiting element in the ranks of Young China, the cowardly attempt to assassinate Yuan Shih-k'ai, the barefaced plundering of the wealthy in the name of liberty-these things are giving pause to many who began with strong feelings of sympathy for the anti-dynastic rising.

As to the manner in which the Republican movement has been represented in the Press of England and the United States, and the Powers' attitude of benevolent non-intervention, most of the opinions upon which public opinion has so far been formed,

have been characterised by vague sentiment rather than by any well-balanced critical faculty or historical judgment of the vital issues involved. Too close a perspective of the men and motives of the moment has, I think, generally obscured these issues and prevented the philosophical detachment necessary to the just perception of cause and effect. Last, but not least, we have to reckon with the influence of finance-welt-politik finance-as one of the most powerful factors in the creation and direction of public opinion: cosmopolitan finance, that elusive, all-pervading and soulless embodiment of Mammon, which hovers, vulture-like, over the destinies of dead or wounded Lations. Beyond all doubt, the financial factor has played as notable a part in precipitating the present crisis in China as all the influence of Japanese advisers and agitators. Sheng Kungpao's railway and loan policy, the immediate cause of the first outbreak in Szechuan, owed both its rise and fall to foreign finance. Here again, the student of history may seek and find a curiously instructive parallel between the present course of events in China and that of Turkey in 1908. The benevolent forbearance adopted by the Powers towards Young China, like the glad Losannas which welcomed the advent of the Young Turk, carries with it but little conviction of disinterested enthusiasm. On the contrary, behind the tumult and the shouting of the revolutionaries we may perceive quite distinctly the still small voice of the political money-lender. Just as, before 1908, Germany strove to obtain a free hand financially for Abdul Hamid, so, before the present rising in China, cosmopolitan finance, politically guided by Germany, had successfully insisted on the Central Government's right to borrow, and to squander, foreign loans-a primary cause of the insurrection, since the provinces desired to acquire that right for themselves. For the past ten years, indeed, the most significant feature of the struggle between Peking and the provinces (not between Manchus and Chinese, be it noted, but between the forces of central bureaucracy and provincial autonomy) has lain in the "patriotic" opposition of the provinces to all foreign loans contracted by Peking, and their feverish anxiety to contract them on their own account.

The present attitude of the foreign communities of the Treaty

Ports towards Young China may be described as one of expectation tempered by apprehension. At Shanghai, in particular, the money-raising expedients of the new régime are causing serious misgivings. For those whose memories are not obscured by their enthusiasms, it is somewhat strange, indeed, that Young China should ever have been credited with sincere pro-foreign proclivities, or that the protection afforded to Europeans in the interior should have been regarded as anything more than the price of sympathetic neutrality. As a matter of fact, there exists another striking resemblance between the situation in Turkey and that of China, in the unmistakable Chauvinism of the student classes, combined with their fixed idea of achieving the abolition of extra-territoriality, and the securing of tariff autonomy by temporary and tactful conciliation. But the paramount idea which actuates nine-tenths of Sun Yat-sen's followers is "China for the Chinese," a China strong enough to rid herself of the presence and advice of all foreigners and to dictate her own terms; a China (to quote from the writings of Sun Yat-sen) "able not only to free herself from her troubles, but to deliver other nations from the necessity of defending their independence and integrity." A perfectly justifiable ambition, but none the less foredoomed because of the defects of its origin.

I have endeavoured to show that, in the present stage of the Chinese people's development, the idea of a Republican form of government is dangerous nonsense, the vain imagining of undisciplined minds. At the same time, it is unquestionably true that, even in the minds of the slow-thinking masses, the Manchus' rule is no longer possible. They have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. What then? Does it follow, as the spokesmen of Young China would have us believe, that there is no possible middle course between the Manchu dynasty and a ready-made Republic? Herein Young Turkey has been far wiser in its generation. Because the Manchus have proved themselves unfit to rule, must the whole fabric on which the Chinese State has rested for two thousand years be cast aside, as a garment outworn? I believe the monarchical principle to be inseparable from the Confucian philosophy, and that the Throne is the national centre of the Chinese social system and