For this reason they were not only prepared in
theory in 1911 to lend armed assistance to the Manchus but would
have speedily done so had not England strongly dissented from such
a course of action when she was privately sounded about the
matter. Even to-day, when a temporary adjustment of Japanese
policy has been successfully arranged, it is of the highest
importance for political students to remember that the dynastic
influences in Tokio have never departed from the view that the
legitimate sovereignty of China remains vested in the Manchu House
and that everything that has taken place since 1911 is irregular
and unconstitutional.
For the time being, however, two dissimilar circumstances demanded
caution: first, the enthusiasm which the Japanese democracy, fed
by a highly excited press, exhibited towards the Young China which
had been so largely grounded in the Tokio schools and which had
carried out the Revolution: secondly--and far more important--the
deep, abiding and ineradicable animosity which Japanese of all
classes felt for the man who had come out of the contest head and
shoulders above everybody else--Yuan Shih-kai. These two
remarkable features ended by completely thrusting into the
background during the period 1911-1914 every other element in
Japanese statesmanship; and of the two the second must be counted
the decisive one. Dating back to Korea, when Yuan Shih-kai's
extraordinary diplomatic talents constantly allowed him to worst
his Japanese rivals and to make Chinese counsels supreme at the
Korean Court up to the very moment when the first shots of the war
of 1894 were fired, this ancient dislike, which amounted to a
consuming hatred, had become a fixed idea.
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