Meanwhile the veteran Dr. Wu Ting-fang, true to his faith,
declared that no power on earth would cause him to sign a Mandate
possessing no legality behind it; and he indeed obstinately
resisted every attempt to seduce him. Although his resignation was
refused he stood his ground manfully, and it became clear that
some other expedient would have to be resorted to. In the small
hours of the 13th June what this was was made clear: by a rapid
reshuffling of the cards Dr. Wu Ting-fang's resignation was
accepted and the general officer commanding the Peking
Gendarmerie, a genial soul named General Chiang Chao-tsung, who
had survived unscathed the vicissitudes of six years of
revolution, was appointed to act in his stead and duly counter-
signed the fateful Mandate which was at once printed and
promulgated at four o'clock in the morning. It has been stated to
the writer that had it not been so issued four battalions of Chang
Hsun's savage pigtailed soldiery, who had been bivouacked for some
days in the grounds of the Temple of Heaven, would have been let
loose on the capital. The actual text of the Mandate proves
conclusively that the President had no hand in its drafting--one
argument being sufficient to prove that, namely the deliberate
ignoring of the fact that Parliament had been called into being by
virture of article 53 of the Nanking Provisional Constitution and
that under article 54 its specific duty was to act as a grand
constitutional conference to draft and adopt the Permanent
Constitution, article 55 furthermore giving Parliament the right
summarily to amend the Provisional Constitution before the
Promulgation of the permanent instrument, should that be
necessary.
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