In concluding our conversation, Li Yuan Hung told me that he had been to Japan for one year only, that he had five children (two boys and three girls), that he was a native of Hwangpi in Hupeh, and that when his children were old enough he would send them away for their education.
"Where to?"
"To America," came the reply, and a happy smile with it. After wishing me goodbye, General Li, still holding my hand, said:—
"One word more before you go." He placed his left hand on my shoulder, bent his body slightly towards me. "Please do not forget to say that this Revolution took place because the Manchus were so unfair to the Chinese—for no other reason."
He then bade me farewell, and I departed.
* * * * *
This interview is given in extenso because of its vital bearing upon the general attitude of the Republican party at the present moment. Events have transpired slightly to throw some of Li Yuan Hung's ambitions to the ground, but the views he held may be taken as the general aims of the party that is headed by Sun Yat Sen to-day. As my manuscript goes forward to the publishers it is a matter of impossibility accurately to predict what the outcome of China's Revolution will be. It may be a Republic; it may be a Monarchy. Be the form of government what it may, however, there will remain in the eyes of every patriotic Chinese but one General Li, and his views on the political situation and the needs of his great country, at the time when her national pendulum tremulously ticked out issues of the highest import, will have a permanent interest for all students of affairs in China.[[3]]
[[1]] This was only a month after the Revolution had broken out. The reader will learn later on in this volume of the changes following along in the ensuing months.
[[2]] Nanking, the city now planned by the Republican party as the capital, after a most stubborn resistance, fell to the Revolutionary Army a fortnight afterwards.