It was a portion of this field-force which
captured and destroyed the chief revolutionary base in the triple
city of Hankow, Hanyang and Wuchang in November, 1911, and which
he held back just as it was about to give the coup de grace by
crossing the river in force and sweeping the last remnants of the
revolutionary army to perdition. Thus it is correct to declare
that had he so wished Yuan Shih-kai could have crushed the
revolution entirely before the end of 1911; but he was
sufficiently astute to see that the problem he had to solve was
not merely military but moral as well. The Chinese as a nation
were suffering from a grave complaint. Their civilization had been
made almost bankrupt owing to unresisted foreign aggression and to
the native inability to cope with the mass of accumulated wrongs
which a superimposed and exhausted feudalism--the Manchu system--
had brought about. Yuan Shih-kai knew that the Boxers had been
theoretically correct in selecting as they first did the watchword
which they had first placed on their banners--"blot out the
Manchus and all foreign things." Both had sapped the old
civilization to its foundations. But the program they had proposed
was idealistic, not practical. One element could be cleared away--
the other had to be endured. Had the Boxers been sensible they
would have modified their program to the extent of protecting the
foreigners, whilst they assailed the Dynasty which had brought
them so low.
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