Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/79

 tals—was for him mere shadow-play and not reality. It is only when the problem is thus envisaged that what took place can be understood.

In the spring of 1913, i.e. considerably more than a year later than it should have occurred, the first republican parliament with a large Southern majority met in Peking in spite of the assassination of their leader Sung Chiao-jen at Shanghai under Yuan Shih-kai's orders. Not only was there this majority, but by virtue of the provisional constitution, which was the law of the land, the Southern leaders believed that they could effectively control Yuan Shih-kai by reducing him to a figurehead. Quickly disillunionized by his signature without parliamentary endorsement of the great Reorganization Loan, which gave him the one thing he needed to secure open mastery—money, they nevertheless held to their point for several months, only inciting open rebellion in the end because they saw that force was still the only argument.

This trumpery affair of July and August, 1913, commonly called the Second Revolution, which was over in a few weeks thanks to the military strength of the North, further weakened the South by allowing the Northern divi-