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'état_ 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 stories seem to run
counter to one another, although they are as closely united as two
assassins pledged to carry through in common a dread adventure. A huge
agglomeration of people estimated to number four hundred millions, being
left without qualified leaders and told that the system of government,
which had been laid down by the Nanking Provisional Constitution and
endorsed by the Abdication Edicts, was a system in which every man was