The Court Party, as we have said, seduced their
leaders to acting in precisely the reverse sense.
Yuan Shih-kai was neither a Boxer, nor yet a believer in
idealistic foolishness. He had realized that the essence of
successful rule in the China of the Twentieth Century was to
support the foreign point of view--nominally at least--because
foreigners disposed of unlimited monetary resources, and had
science on their side. He knew that so long as he did not openly
flout foreign opinion by indulging in barefaced assassinations, he
would be supported owing to the international reputation he had
established in 1900. Arguing from these premises, his instinct
also told him that an appearance of legality must always be
sedulously preserved and the aspirations of the nation nominally
satisfied. For this reason he arranged matters in such a manner as
to appear always as the instrument of fate. For this reason,
although he destroyed the revolutionists on the mid-Yangtsze, to
equalize matters, on the lower Yangtsze he secretly ordered the
evacuation of Nanking by the Imperialist forces so that he might
have a tangible argument with which to convince the Manchus
regarding the root and branch reform which he knew was necessary.
That reform had been accepted in principle by the Throne when it
agreed to the so-called Nineteen Fundamental Articles, a corpus of
demands which all the Northern Generals had endorsed and had
indeed insisted should be the basis of government before they
would fight the rebellious South in 1911.
Pages:
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66