Page:China and the Manchus.djvu/139

Rh gravity of the situation was realized. It is true that under the Manchus access to official papers of the most private description was always to be obtained at a moderate outlay; it was thus, for instance, that we were able to appreciate the inmost feelings of that grim old Manchu, Wo-jen, who, in 1861, presented a secret memorial to the throne, and stated therein that his loathing of all foreigners was so great that he longed to eat their flesh and sleep on their skins.

The guiding spirit of the movement, Sun Yat-sen, is a native of Kuangtung, where he was born, not very far from Canton, in 1866. After some early education in Honolulu, he became a student at the College of Medicine, Hongkong, where he took his diploma in 1892. But his chief aim in life soon became a political one, and he determined to get rid of the Manchus. He organized a Young China party in Canton, and in 1895 made an attempt to seize the city. The plot failed, and fifteen out of the sixteen conspirators were arrested and executed; Sun Yat-sen alone escaped. A year later, he was in London, preparing himself for further efforts by the study of Western forms of government, a very large reward being offered by the Chinese Government for his body, dead or alive. During his stay there he was decoyed into the Chinese Legation, and imprisoned in an upper room, from which he would have been hurried away to China, probably