The Summer vacation gave him the opportunity of revisiting
in the capacity of a transient the scenes of his former idleness;
and the holiday-task set him by his large-hearted patron was to
prove in as few folios as possible that China ought to be a
Monarchy and not a Republic--a theme on which every schoolboy
could no doubt write with fluency. Consequently Dr. Goodnow,
arming himself with a limited amount of paper and ink, produced in
very few days the Memorandum which follows,--a document which it
is difficult to speak of dispassionately since it seems to have
been deliberately designed to play into the hands of a man who was
now openly set on betraying the trust the nation reposed in him,
and who was ready to wade through rivers of blood to satisfy his
insensate ambition.
Nothing precisely similar to this Goodnow Memorandum has ever been
seen before in the history of Asia: it was the ultramodern spirit
impressed into the service of mediaeval minds. In any other
capital of the world the publication of such a subversive
document, following the Yang Tu pamphlet, would have led to riot
and tumult. In China, the home of pacifism, the politicians and
people bowed their heads and bided their time. Even foreign
circles in China were somewhat nonplussed by the insouciance
displayed by the peripatetic legal authority; and the Memorandum
was for many days spoken of as an unnecessary indiscretion.
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