The ancients once said: "It is only when the living do
try to become strong that the dead are not dead." This is also the
wish of me, the Great President.
(Signed) TUAN CHI-JUI, Secretary of State and Minister of War,
TSAO JU-LIN, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Communications.
WANG YI-TANG, Minister of Interior.
CHOW TZU-CHI, Minister of Finance.
LIU-KUAN-HSIUNG, Minister of Navy.
CHANG TSUNG-HSIANG, Minister of Justice and Agriculture and
Commerce.
CHANG KUO-KAN, Minister of Education.
6th day of the 6th month of the 5th year of Chung Hua Min Kuo.
This tragic denouement did not fail to awaken within very few days
among thinking minds a feeling of profound sympathy for the dead
man coupled with sharp disgust for the part that foreigners had
played--not all, of course--but a great number of them. Briefly,
when all the facts are properly grouped it can be said that Yuan
Shih-kai was killed by his foreign friends--by the sort of advice
he has been consistently given in Constitutional Law, in Finance,
in Politics, in Diplomacy. It is easy to trace step by step the
broad road he had been tempted to travel, and to see how at each
turning-point the men who should have taught him how to be true
and loyal to the Western things the country had nominally adhered
to from the proclamation of the Republic, showed him how to be
disloyal and untrue. The tragedy is one which is bound to be
deeply studied throughout the whole world when the facts are
properly known and there is time to think about them, and if there
is anything today left to poetic justice the West will know to
whom to apportion the blame.
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