strictest sense of the words every phase of the settlement then
arrived at was a settlement in terms of cash.[Footnote: There is
no doubt that the so-called Belgian loan, 1,800,000 pounds of
which was paid over in cash at the beginning of 1912, was the
instrument which brought every one to terms.]

Had means existed for rapidly replenishing the Chinese Treasury
without having recourse to European stockmarkets (whose actions
are semi-officially controlled when distant regions are involved)
the Republic might have fared better. But placed almost at once
through foreign dictation under a species of police-control,
which while nominally derived from Western conceptions, was
primarily designed to rehabilitate the semblance of the authority
which had been so sensationally extinguished, the Republic
remained only a dream; and the world, taught to believe that there
could be no real stability until the scheme of government
approximated to the conception long formed of Peking absolutism,
waited patiently for the rude awakening which came with the Yuan
Shih-kai coup d'etat of 4th November, 1913. Thus we had this
double paradox; on the one hand the Chinese people awkwardly
trying to be western in a Chinese way and failing: on the other,
foreign officials and foreign governments trying to be Chinese and
making the confusion worse confounded. It was inevitable in such
circumstances that the history of the past six years should have
been the history of a slow tragedy, and that almost every page
should be written over with the name of the man who was the
selected bailiff of the Powers--Yuan Shih-kai.