THE FIGHT FOR THE REPUBLIC IN CHINA





CHAPTER I

GENERAL INTRODUCTION


The revolution which broke out in China on the 10th October, 1911,
and which was completed with the abdication of the Manchu Dynasty
on the 12th February, 1912, though acclaimed as highly successful,
was in its practical aspects something very different. With the
proclamation of the Republic, the fiction of autocratic rule had
truly enough vanished; yet the tradition survived and with it
sufficient of the essential machinery of Imperialism to defeat the
nominal victors until the death of Yuan Shih-kai.

The movement to expel the Manchus, who had seized the Dragon
Throne in 1644 from the expiring Ming Dynasty, was an old one.
Historians are silent on the subject of the various secret plots
which were always being hatched to achieve that end, their silence
being due to a lack of proper records and to the difficulty of
establishing the simple truth in a country where rumour reigns
supreme. But there is little doubt that the famous Ko-lao-hui, a