Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/80

 sional generals, who had hitherto not been in office south of the Yangtsze, to occupy the whole line of provincial capitals running from Wuchang (Hankow) to the sea. By the end of the revolt the North was therefore considerably stronger than it had been in 1912. Not only were fourteen out of twenty-one provinces openly in its hand—forming a solid block of territory from the Amur to a point south of Shanghai—but portions of the remaining seven provinces were menaced, making the Southern outlook as black as it could be.

Had Yuan Shih-kai not yielded to the last of the three impulses which had dictated his entire policy from 1911—his ambition—he would possibly be alive to-day as ruler of a very centralized and very bureaucratic commonwealth. But in 1915, yielding to the importunities of his family circle and of his friends—who declared that the moment had arrived for the substitution of a legalized regime for his de facto dictatorship—he gave his consent for the monarchy movement and thereby signed his death-warrant.

There is even to-day a controversy among scholars as to precisely why there should have been such a pother about his attempting to do what so many Chinese had successfully done