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 Japan that the Manchu abdication of February, 1912, came—after a British refusal to countenance armed force being lent to retain the dynasty. And when it was plainly shown that Yuan Shih-kai, who for quarter-of-a-century had been the arch-enemy of the Tokio Government, was being supported by all the Western Powers alike as an instrument to continue the politico-financial policy of the pre-abdication days, every group of Japanese became convinced of the necessity of drastic action.

The outbreak of the World War gave the needed opportunity. Japan consented to declare war on Germany only on her own conditions. The mishandling of the Tsingtao question by the Allies—the British Government, for instance, could easily have induced Yuan Shih-kai to deliver a twenty-four hours' ultimatum on Germany to evaculate Chinese soil, since the President of China had 50,000 troops almost at Tsingtao's back doors—allowed Japan to make war as if by favour, using the belligerent conditions throughout the world to hasten on a policy which had nothing to do with the issues being so savagely fought out on European soil. And when Yuan Shih-kai, tardily recovering from the surprise into which