[19.] H. G. W. Woodhead (ed.), The China Year Book, 1921-2, Tientsin, 1921; chap. XIX, "Defense," by Rodney Gilbert, pp. 511-512. Gilbert's is a competent contemporary account of tuchünism, sketching the background very clearly.
[20.] George H. Blakeslee (ed.), China and the Far East, New York, 1910, Chapter X, "The Chinese Army—Its Development and Present Strength," by Major Eben Swift, p. 181. See also General H. Frey, L'Armée chinoise: l'armée ancienne, l'armée nouvelle, l'armée chinoise dans l'avenir, Paris, 1904.
[21.] For a discussion of the governmental changes of the period see below, p. [145 ff.] See also H. F. MacNair, China in Revolution, Chicago, 1931; A. N. Holcombe, The Spirit of the Chinese Revolution, New York, 1931. For a contemporary censure of Yüan Shih-k'ai see Paul Myron [Paul M. W. Linebarger], Our Chinese Chances, Chicago, 1915.
Chapter V
[CAUSES]
Yüan's closing years might have resembled Napoleon's rise from the position of First Consul to that of emperor, had he not been checked at the very last moment by armed uprisings and expressions of deep popular contempt. Even so, he retained control of the country.[1] The humiliation of his defeat lacked even dramatic compensations, and he died in June, 1916, of disease, poison, or chagrin. With his death the Republic had a chance to stand by itself, but it could not.
Yüan had fastened the symbols of old on the scaffolding of a new order. With his death the momentum of administrative routine retained from the Manchu dynasty was lost; the Republican government in Peking degenerated from impotence to comedy. The process called government began to nauseate patriotic Chinese and foreigners alike; few were able to take a long view, to maintain their courage, and to keep on fighting against disgusting and disheartening realities. With the decomposition of the central government—except the modern bureaucracies such as posts and customs, which were kept intact by their foreign personnel and their special international status—the armies, though divided provincially, stepped into positions of unprecedented authority. There was a veritable epidemic of monarchical ambition, greed, and willfulness among the provincial military commanders; many Chinese expected a new Yüan to emerge from that group and become the "strong man of China." With such a stage to strut on, it is not surprising that the Chinese military lost constructive vision. A sober nucleus of idealistically hard-headed, patriotic men, each a George Washington, might have used military power to reunite the country, but order could not be expected to emerge from the unsystematized competition of armed forces.