Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/70

 China must win her complete independence or be carved up.

In 1911 a valiant attempt was made on the part of Young China to secure the first alternative by erecting a republic. But, as the writer has sought to explain in a recent work, the attempt was not a great success mainly because the liberal Powers of the world, being every whit as short-sighted then as they have shown themselves in the case of Russia, did not love the Chinese Revolution—only tolerating the elimination of the Manchu autocracy because the bondholders' interest in the country was not directly affected. At the earliest possible opportunity they assisted reaction in the person of Yuan Shih-kai; subsidized him so that he might destroy all his rivals and the embryo of parliamentary government into the bargain; and then were mightily surprised that he should have aspired to a burlesque kingship which killed him and left the country pretty well wrecked.

The results of the republican experiment in China, so far as Europe was concerned, were thus counted quite negligible. It was said by professional diplomats, who probably know less about modern politics than any other body of men, and who have been badly frightened