as good as neighbour, swayed meaninglessly to and fro, vainly seeking to
regain the equilibrium which had been so sensationally lost. A litigious
spirit became so universal that all authority was openly derided,
crimes of every description being so common as to force most respectable
men to withdraw from public affairs and leave a bare rump of desperadoes
in power.

Long embarrassed by the struggle to pay her foreign loans and
indemnities, China was also virtually penniless. The impossibility of
arranging large borrowings on foreign markets without the open support
of foreign governments--a support which was hedged round with
conditions--made necessary a system of petty expedients under which
practically every provincial administration hypothecated every liquid
asset it could lay hands upon in order to pay the inordinate number of
undisciplined soldiery who littered the countryside. The issue of
unguaranteed paper-money soon reached such an immense figure that the
market was flooded with a worthless currency which it was unable to
absorb. The Provincial leaders, being powerless to introduce
improvement, exclaimed that it was the business of the Central
Government as representative of the sovereign people to find solutions;
and so long as they maintained themselves in office they went their
respective ways with a sublime contempt for the chaos around them.

What was this Central Government? In order successfully to understand an
unparalleled situation we must indicate its nature.

The manoeuvres to which Yuan Shih-kai had so astutely lent himself from
the outbreak of the Revolution had left him at its official close
supreme in name. Not only had he secured an Imperial Commission from the
abdicating Dynasty to organize a popular Government in obedience to the