Briefly
Yuan Shih-kai had been told in so many words that since he was
already autocrat of all the Chinese, he had only to endorse the
principle of Japanese guidance in his administration to find that
his Throne would be as good as publicly and solidly established.
Being saturated with the doleful diplomacy of Korea, and seeing in
these proposals a mere trap, Yuan Shih-kai, as we have shown, had
drawn back in apparent alarm. Nevertheless the words spoken had
sunk in deep, for the simple and excellent reason that ever since
the coup d'etat of the 4th November, 1913, the necessity of
"consolidating" his position by something more permanent than a
display of armed force had been a daily subject of conversation in
the bosom of his family. The problem, as this misguided man saw
it, was simply by means of an unrivalled display of cunning to
profit by the Japanese suggestion, and at the same time to leave
the Japanese in the lurch.
His eldest son, an individual of whom it has been said that he had
absorbed every theory his foreign teachers had taught him without
being capable of applying a single one, was the leader in this
family intrigue. The unhappy victim of a brutal attempt to kill
him during the Revolution, this eldest son had been for years
semi-paralyzed: but brooding over his disaster had only fortified
in him the resolve to succeed his father as legitimate Heir.
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