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 national wish, but having brought
to Peking the Delegates of the Nanking Revolutionary Body he had
received from them the formal offer of the Presidency.
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