Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/123

 voice of the nation. The first full Parliament should therefore have assembled in Peking by October, 1912; it did not meet until April, 1913, owing to deliberate obstruction in the elections practised by Yuan Shih-kai—the last act of which was the assassination of the Southern leader Sung Chiao-jen. This Parliament was not yet fully organized when Yuan Shih-kai, alleging that the National Council (sitting prior to the convocation of Parliament) had given him power to do so, forced through the great Reorganization Loan over Parliament's head, denying that it had the right to scrutinize this important measure and being supported in his unconstitutional and reactionary policy by five Powers—England, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan. Native arms and foreign diplomacy thus formed as unholy alliance in China in 1913 as in Vienna Congress days in Europe in 1815.

This first great assault on the Republic was followed by a six-month period of intimidation and bribery, after which Yuan Shih-kai finally secured the passage of the Presidential Election Law and was elected full president for the first five-year term. Thereupon, having a complete legal title, he carried out his coup d'état of the 4th November, 1913, and unseated all Southern members of Parliament, following this by de-