By staking everything on the
necessity of adhering to the Nanking Provisional Constitution
until a permanent instrument was drawn up, the Kuo Ming Tang
rapidly established an ascendancy; for although the Nanking
Constitution had admittedly failed to bring representative
government because of the difficulty of defining powers in such a
way as to make a practical autocracy impossible, it had at least
established as a basic principle that China could no longer be
ruled as a family possession, which in itself marked a great
advance on all previous conceptions. President Li Yuan-hung's
policy, in the circumstances, was to play the part of a moderator
and to seek to bring harmony to a mass of heterogeneous elements
that had to carry out the practical work of government over four
hundred millions of people.
His success was at the outset hampered by the appeal the military
were quick in making to a new method--to offset the power of
Parliament in Peking. We have already dealt with the evils of the
circular telegram in China--surely one of the most unexpected
results of adapting foreign inventions to native life. By means of
these telegraphic campaigns a rapid exchange of views is made
possible among the provincial governors; and consequently in the
autumn of 1916, inspired by the Military Party, a wholly illegal
Conference of generals was organized by the redoubtable old
General Chang Hsun on the Pukow railway for the purpose of
overawing parliament, and securing that the Military Party
retained a controlling hand behind the scenes.
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