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Permanent gates newly constructed in the business quarter of Peking to prevent crowds of looters, in case of an outbreak, rushing through the streets

their heads hung as warnings to other evildoers, and their bodies left to impede the passage of pedestrians, camel-trains, other pack-animals, and carts. Such is the way of justice in China.

But I want again to emphasize the fact that government is impossible in that country unless the administrators of the law are willing to put it drastically into execution; and after the long period of utter anarchy that followed the revolution, Yüan himself was, and is still to-day, the only law. I believe that, according to his lights and the insecure power that he holds, he is a patriot. In China it is often the case that men kill themselves for trivial reasons, for life is not the desirable thing, constantly full of hope, that it is with us. On the railways, for example, men frequently kill themselves, their object being to obtain sufficient money for an honorable funeral from the company. It is evident, therefore, that to take men's lives is also a less grave matter there than here. China is still living in an epoch corresponding with our Middle Ages. Only the fringe of the country has been affected through her treaty ports.

Yüan Shi-kai has seemed genial, if never

kindly, on the several occasions when I have spoken with him. At times he has a very merry twinkle in his heavy eyes. His head is large, almost massive, like his body; his white hair and drooping mustaches are thin. He has asthma, and often has to take breath between sentences when he speaks. He shows a splendid set of even, substantial teeth, almost as evident, but not so white, as Roosevelt's. His nose is small and not prominent, set back in a flat face, which is, of course, distinctly Chinese. His ears are large, his mother perhaps having encouraged the elongations which Chinese admire; his hands and feet, on the contrary, are comparatively small, as Chinese prefer to have them. His soft, almost flabby hands are no indication of his character, for it is not the fashion in China to grip a hand in shaking it; in fact, to shake hands at all is contrary to Yüan's training, and he does it only because foreigners expect it.

He is not a man who binds himself by rules, customs, or precedents, although he appears always to be careful, like any wise politician, not to run dangerously counter to traditions or prejudices. It was characteristic of him, for example, to cling

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The east entrance to the Imperial City, in the heart of which is the Forbidden City. The

walls and a pagoda of the latter are seen in the background

President Yüan Shi-kai, surrounded by military officers and officials in ancient sacrificial

robes, leaving the Altar of Heaven hold. The household, including grandchildren and the wives of his sons, is said to number more than threescore. The newspapers in Peking reported one day about a year ago that two sons who were not twins were born to him on the same day. The whole family lives in the Chinese manner in the same compound, the extensive inclosure of the Winter Palace, the residence of the notorious Empress Dowager Tsu-hsi. The Winter Palace is a portion of the Forbidden City, in the main part of which the little Manchu emperor is still permitted to keep a bodyguard and maintain his court.

A summary of the new monarch's career will undoubtedly demonstrate his practical character better than it could be sketched. It is a terrible career. That he himself lived through it is remarkable.

He was born of an obscure family about the year 1857. His father was a minor provincial gentleman without suffi

cient influence to launch him into national affairs, the goal of every ambitious Chinese. Nor was Yüan able to pass those literary examinations that admitted young men into government office. It was by the back door, so to speak, that he got into politics. He got in through the army, until recently a dishonored profession. The army was all that tradition said of it, a cutthroat rabble employed to butcher, a disgraceful calling in the eyes of the Chinese. At that time, however, soldiers were a very necessary institution, for the retention of Korea as a Chinese dependency was the absorbing question for the Government which Li Hung Chang controlled. Yüan was not a soldier; his grade was somewhat better than that: he had charge as a clerk of a commissary or other administrative office in the transfer of troops to the Hermit Kingdom.

It is amazing to note with what rapidity he rose in authority, once having been recognized by the famous Li; but it is not surprising to one who has observed the vigorous use which Yüan constantly makes of his mind in contrast with the customary Chinese obedience to tradition. The Chinese scholar, saturated with the classics, would seek among his parrot-like learnings for quotations from the sages applicable to a given situation. Not so Yüan; he thought for himself. Korea was the place where men of action were needed, and so few were the vigorous men among the Chinese that before Yüan was thirty years of age he was established as Chinese resident, the highest office of his Government, at Seul, the Korean capital. I am sorry to say that his reputation for ruthless slaughter was already notorious.

In China it is no great crime for an official to get rid of rivals or political opponents. There are no courts of law that give unbiased judgments, especially in political matters, and officials must be willing to kill when necessary or give place to others who will. Even to this day a father holds the power of life or death over his child. I know of the case, occurring within two years, of a policeman in Peking destroying his year-old son by dashing the

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Yüan Shi-kai, at the first presidential inauguration, surrounded by a bodyguard of officers, at the head of the steps of the Foreign Office, immediately

after taking the oath of office in that building

child's head on a pavement. It did not enter the minds of the authorities to arrest the man. Also within two years a presidential mandate, the only binding law in China to-day, has been issued in the capital city itself providing that, robberies having become so frequent since the lax republican regulations came into force, the old provision of capital punishment should be inflicted on the coolie who hired a rickshaw and did not return it to the owner. Rickshaw-men often fail to get sufficient "fares" in a day to pay the cost of renting their vehicles, and are sometimes driven, after getting deeply in debt, to stealing a rickshaw, the value of which varies from five to thirty dollars.

To go back to Yüan's career. When the Japanese drove the Chinese out of Korea, Yüan came back to China to assume responsibility in court circles in Peking, and soon became a Mandarin of the Yellow Jacket, a guardian of the emperor. But the title did not prevent him from betraying his Majesty Kwang-su. This is the most notorious episode of his career, but one, nevertheless, for which he may have had justification in that the emperor was incapable of achieving the

reforms which he proposed. The story is this: the emperor summoned Yüan in private audience, instructed him to proceed quickly to Tientsin and go to the yamen, or official residence, of the Viceroy Yung Lu; to slay that officer and take command. of his troops; to return to Peking immediately, bringing the soldiers with him; to surround the palace of the empress dowager (not the emperor's mother, but the widow of the former emperor), destroy or capture her bodyguard, and make her his prisoner.

Yüan, with proper kowtows, pretended to accept the command; but, on arrival at the Tientsin yamen, informed Yung Lu of the dainty commission intrusted to him. Instead, of course, of Yüan's leading the troops to Peking, the general who supported the empress took them thither; and instead of the Winter Palace being surrounded, the Forbidden City proper was cordoned. The emperor became the prisoner, and went to live in an imperial palace on an island in the lake in the Winter Palace inclosure.

Subsequently, when Yüan held the office. of Viceroy of Shan-tung, the metropolitan province, he organized the so-styled model

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Old-style soldiers in Peking. They were brought to the capital to balance the power

of the modern troops before Yüan was certain of control

army, having learned that a rabble of undisciplined, untrained troops could be mowed down like so many unarmed men by soldiers adequately organized and commanded. He showed his common sense, too, in 1900, when the Boxers had persuaded most other viceroys as well as members of the grand council to let them exterminate the foreigners; for not a foreign life was lost in Shan-tung. Characteristic, too, is the fact that Yüan was one of the few advisers of the Government who warned the empress dowager-guardedly, of course-to come to terms at any price with the foreign nations.

The imprisoned emperor died mysteriously at the same time as the empress dowager, probably slain or poisoned lest he should succeed in resuming the power of office and wreaking vengeance on those Manchu princes and Chinese mandarins who had made and held him prisoner. By the emperor's death Yüan's life was undoubtedly saved, but not his official career. A nephew of the late emperor, a boy a few years old, came to the throne by selection of the Manchus, and the child's father became regent. This regent, Prince Chun, immediately dismissed Yüan, not denouncing him as a traitor, for so direct a state

ment would not accord with Chinese ideas of politeness; but by declaring that one of Yüan's legs was not strong, the regent gave him indefinite leave of absence to retire into obscurity and cure it. Yüan went to his estate in Honan, there to live the life of a country gentleman for about three years, until this same regent, harassed by the revolution of 1911-12 and having no capable counselor to advise and serve him, humbled himself and requested Yüan to return.

Yüan declined until full power of administration was placed in his hands. He then summoned his adherents, and sent the strongest of them, Chao Ping-chun, to Peking to take charge of the police. Tsai Ting-kan went to Wuchang to interview General Li Yuan-heng, the rebel leader, and appears to have come to terms with him.

As soon as Yüan came to the capital he required the regent to abdicate, leaving the dowager, wife of the late emperor, a weak woman to whom Yüan could dictate, in charge of the throne. The Northern armies were capable and in a position to defeat the rebels, but Yüan undoubtedly. restrained them, connived in their desertion to the rebel cause, and finally informed the empress that the struggle was

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