Accepting
readily as his Ministers in the more unimportant government
Departments the nominees of the Southern Confederacy (which was
now formally dissolved), Yuan Shih-kai was careful to reserve for
his own men everything that concerned the control of the army and
the police, as well as the all-important ministry of finance. The
framework having been thus erected, attention was almost
immediately concentrated on the problem of finding money, an
amazing matter which would weary the stoutest reader if given in
all its detail but which being part and parcel of the general
problem must be referred to.
Certain essential features can be very rapidly exposed. We have
already made clear the purely economic nature of the forces which
had sapped the foundations of Chinese society. Primarily it had
been the disastrous nature of Chinese gold-indebtedness which had
given the new ideas the force they required to work their will on
the nation. And just because the question of this gold-
indebtedness had become so serious and such a drain on the nation,
some months before the outbreak of the Revolution an arrangement
had been entered into with the bankers of four nations for a
Currency Loan of 10,000,000 pounds with which to make an organized
effort to re-establish internal credit. But this loan had never
actually been floated, as a six months' safety clause had
permitted a delay during which the Revolution had come.
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