This was very rapidly done, as apart from the soldiers
in plain clothes the mass of people belonged to the lowest class,
and had no stomach for a fight, having only been paid to shout. It
was nearly midnight, after twelve hours of isolation and a
foodless day, that the Representatives were able to disperse
without having debated the war-question. The upshot was that with
the exception of the Minister of Education, the Premier found that
his entire Cabinet had resigned, the Ministers being unwilling to
be associated with what had been an attempted coercion of
Parliament carried out by the Military.
The Premier, General Tuan Chi-jui, however, remained determined to
carry his point, and within a week a second dispatch was sent to
the House of Representatives demanding, in spite of what had
happened, that the declaration of war be immediately brought up
for debate. Meanwhile publication in a leading Peking newspaper of
further details covering Japan's subterranean activities greatly
inflamed the public, and made the Liberal political elements more
determined than ever to stand firm. It was alleged that Count
Terauchi was reviving in a more subtle form Group V of the Twenty-
one Demands of 1915, the latest Japanese proposal taking the form
of a secret Treaty of twenty articles of which the main
stipulations were to be a loan of twenty million yen to China to
reorganize the three main Chinese arsenals under Japanese
guidance, and a further loan of eighty million yen to be expended
on the Japanization of the Chinese army.
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