Having saturated himself in Napoleonic literature, and being fully
aware of how far a bold leader can go in times of emergency, he
daily preached to his father the necessity of plucking the pear as
soon as it was ripe. The older man, being more skilled and more
cautious in statecraft than this youthful visionary, purposely
rejected the idea so long as its execution seemed to him
premature. But at last the point was reached when he was persuaded
to give the monarchy advocates the free hand they solicited, being
largely helped to this decision by the argument that almost
anything in China could be accomplished under cover of the war,--
SO LONG AS VESTED FOREIGN INTERESTS WERE NOT JEOPARDIZED.
In accordance with this decision, very shortly after the 18th
January, the dictator's lieutenants had begun to sound the leaders
of public opinion regarding the feasibility of substituting for
the nominal Republic a Constitutional Monarchy. Thus, in a highly
characteristic way, all through the tortuous course of the
Japanese negotiations, to which he was supposed to be devoting his
sole attention in order to save his menaced fatherland, Yuan Shih-
kai was assisting his henchmen to indoctrinate Peking officialdom
with the idea that the salvation of the State depended more on
restoring on a modified basis the old empire than in beating off
the Japanese assault. It was his belief that if some scholar of
national repute could be found, who would openly champion these
ideas and urge them with such persuasiveness and authority that
they became accepted as a Categorical Imperative, the game would
be as good as won, the Foreign Powers being too deeply committed
abroad to pay much attention to the Far East.
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