I emphasize that it is better to give the people less
power at the beginning than to deceive them. Be honest with them
is my policy.
Mr. Ko: I thank you very much for what you have said. Your
discussion is interesting and I can understand it well. The proper
method of procedure and honesty of purpose which you have
mentioned will tend to wipe out all former corruption.
Mr. Ko, or the stranger, then departed.
On this note the pamphleteer abruptly ends. Having discussed ad
nauseam the inadequacy of all existing arrangements, even those
made by Yuan Shih-kai himself, to secure a peaceful succession to
the presidency; and having again insisted upon the evil part
soldiery cannot fail to play, he introduces a new peril, the
certainty that the foreign Powers will set up a puppet Emperor
unless China solves this problem herself, the case of Korea being
invoked as an example of the fate of divided nations. Fear of
Japan and the precedent of Korea, being familiar phenomena, are
given a capital in all this debate, being secondary only to the
crucial business of ensuring the peaceful succession to the
supreme office. The transparent manner in which the history of the
first three years of the Republic is handled in order to drive
home these arguments will be very apparent. A fit crown is put on
the whole business by the final suggestion that the Constitutional
Government of China under the new empire must be a mixture of the
Prussian and Japanese systems, Yang Tu's last words being that it
is best to be honest with the people! No more damning indictment
of Yuan Shih-kai's regime could possibly have been penned.
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