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In a short time Yuan Shih-kai saw that the revolutionaries were powerful enough to compel consideration and at least partial acquiescence in their demands.

The Delegates had been charged specifically to demand on behalf of the seceding provinces that Yuan Shih-kai should proceed with them to Nanking to take that oath, a course of action which would have been held tantamount by the nation to surrender on his part to those who had been unable to vanquish him in the field.

Its ruler, Ho-lien P'o-p'o, belonged to the family of Mao Tun and originally, like Liu Yüan, bore the sinified family name Liu; but he altered this to a Hun name, taking the family name of Ho-lien. This one fact alone demonstrates that the Hsia rejected Chinese culture and were nationalistic Hun.

Two or three days later Sun Yat-sen in a disinterested spirit resigned, and Yuan Shih-kai was unanimously elected President by the Nanking Assembly; Yuan accepted the office, and thus north and south were united in "The Great Republic of China."

She would, however, appoint a substitute to go into mourning for him, and this with the knowledge that she had borne a son whose services were so necessary to the safety of the government and the country, would be a sufficient comfort to the spirit of his departed mother, and Yuan was forced to continue in his official position as Governor of the province without the intermission of a single day of mourning.

The chief regent, however, worked against Yüan Shih-k'ai and dismissed him at the beginning of 1909; Yüan's supporters remained at their posts. Yüan himself now entered into relations with the revolutionaries, whose centre was Canton, and whose undisputed leader was now Sun Yat-sen.

In the former year a revolution in that distracted country had come to an end and a republic had been set up with Yuan Shih-kai as President. Since the new government was in need of funds, it undertook to borrow through an associated group of bankers from six foreign nations, the United States among them.

In China a revolt for a republic began at Wuchang in October; the Manchu court made Yuan Shi-kai dictator; he summoned a National Assembly. All southern China joined the republic movement under Sun Yat Sen; Nanking captured and made capital of the Republic.

But the pressure from the outside was not all of this sinister sort; friendly representations from the genuinely well-disposed Powers did a good deal to bring the combatants to a mutual understanding. But throughout the revolution, as in the final result, the great outstanding, commanding figure was Yuan Shih-kai himself.

Vast movements, which can be handled only tentatively even in exhaustive essays are dismissed in misleading sentences framed so as to serve as mere introduction to the inevitable climax the Chinese Constitutional Monarchy of 1915 with Yuan Shih-kai as Emperor. Yet this is not all.