At once it became clear again, as happens a thousand times during
every year in the East, that what is not nipped in the bud grows
with such malignant swiftness as finally to blight all honest
intentions. Had steps been taken on or about the 23rd May to
detain forcibly in Peking the ringleader of the recalcitrant
Military Governors, one General Ni Shih-chung of Anhui, history
would have been very different and China spared much national and
international humiliation. Six years of stormy happenings had
certainly bred in the nation a desire for constitutionalism and a
detestation of military domination. But this desire and
detestation required firm leadership. Without that leadership it
was inchoate and powerless, and indeed made furtive by the
constant fear of savage reprisals. A great opportunity had come
and a great opportunity had been lost. President Li Yuan-hung's
personal argument, communicated to the writer, was that in sealing
the Mandate dissolving Parliament he had chosen the lesser of two
evils, for although South China and the Chinese Navy declared they
would defend Parliament to the last, they were far away whilst
large armies were echeloned along the railways leading into Peking
and daily threatening action. The events of the next year or so
must prove conclusively, in spite of what has happened in this
month of June, 1917, that the corrupt power of the sword can no
longer even nominally rule China.
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