Modern Peking: The Palace Entrance lined with Troops. Note the New-type Chinese Policeman in foreground.
The Premier General Tuan Chi-jui, Head of the Cabinet which decided to declare war on Germany.
In a Mandate, issued in response to this Bill, Yuan Shih-kai merely limits himself to handing over the control of the elections and voting to the local authorities, safe in the knowledge that every detail of the plot had been carefully worked out in advance. By this time the fact that a serious and dangerous movement was being actively pushed had been well-impressed on the Peking Legations, and some anxiety was publicly manifested. It was known that Japan, as the active enemy of Yuan Shih-kai, could not remain permanently silent: and on the 28th October in association with Great Britain and Russia, she indeed made official inquiries at the Chinese Foreign Office regarding the meaning of the movement. She was careful, however, to declare that it was her solicitude for the general peace that alone dictated her action.[[18]] Nevertheless, her warning had an unmistakable note about it and occasioned grave anxiety, since the ultimatum of the previous May in connection with the Twenty-one Demands had not been forgotten. At the beginning of November the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, replying verbally to these representations, alleged that the movement had gone too far for it to be stopped and insisted that no apprehensions need be felt by the Foreign Powers regarding the public safety. Dissatisfied by this reply all the Entente Powers, now including France and Italy, renewed their representations, receiving a few days later a formal Note in which absolute guarantees were given that law and order would be sedulously preserved. Baffled by this firmness, and conscious that further intervention in such matter would be fraught with grave difficulties, the Entente Powers decided to maintain a watchful attitude but to do no more publicly. Consequently events marched forward so rapidly that by December the deed was done, and Yuan Shih-kai had apparently been elected unanimously Emperor of China by the provincial ballot.
The explanation of this extraordinary business was only made public months later with the outbreak of the Yunnan rebellion and the secession of the Southern provinces. In a remarkable publication, entitled satirically "The People's Will," the Southern Republican Party, which now possessed access to all the confidential archives of the provinces, published in full the secret instructions from Peking which had brought about this elaborate comedy. Though considerations of space prevent all documents being included in our analysis, the salient ones are here textually quoted so as to exhibit in its proper historical light the character of the chief actor, and the régime the Powers had supported—until they were forced by Japan to be more honest. These documents, consisting mainly of telegraphic dispatches sent from Peking to the provinces, do more to explain the working of the Government of China than a dozen treatises; for they drag into the garish light of day the most secret Yamen machinery and show precisely how it is worked.
The play was set in motion by a circular code telegram sent out on the 30th August by Tuan Chih-kuei, Governor of Moukden and one of Yuan Shih-kai's most trusted lieutenants, the device of utilizing a centre other than the capital to propagate revolutionary ideas being a familiar one and looked upon as a very discreet procedure. This initial telegram is a document that speaks for itself:
CODE TELEGRAM DATED AUGUST 30, 1915, FROM TUAN CHI-KUEI, MILITARY GOVERNOR OF MOUKDEN, ET ALIA, CONTAINING INSTRUCTIONS FOR PRESENTING PETITIONS TO PEKING IN THE NAME OF THE CITIZENS OF THE PROVINCES
To the Military and Civil Governors of the Provinces:—