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Updated: June 24, 2025
But hardly had the first formalities been completed and Speakers been elected to both Houses, than by a single dramatic stroke Yuan Shih-kai reduced to nought these labours by stabbing in the back the whole theory and practice of popular government. The method he employed was simplicity itself, and it is peculiarly characteristic of the man that he should have been so bluntly cynical.
To secure that end Yuan Shih-kai suddenly dispatched to Wuchang where the Vice-President had resided without break since 1911 the Minister of War, General Tuan Chi-jui, with implicit instructions to deal with the problem in any way he deemed satisfactory, stopping short of nothing should his victim prove recalcitrant.
Although even the child-mind might have known that powers for Constitution-making were vested solely in the National Assembly, and that the re-division of authority which was now made was wholly illegal, because Yuan Shih-kai as the bailiff of the Powers was able to do much as he pleased; and at a moment when Liberal Europe was on the eve of plunging into the most terrible war in history in defence of right against might, reaction and Prussianism of the most repulsive type were passed by unnoticed in China.
They had been made possible by the so-called "Article of Favourable Treatment" drawn- up by Yuan Shih-kai himself, after consultation with the rebellious South.
Yuan Shih-kai had been personally recommended by this General Wu Chang-ching as a young man of ability and energy to the famous Li Hung Chang, who as Tientsin Viceroy and High Commissioner for the Northern Seas was responsible for the conduct of Korean affairs. The future dictator of China was then only twenty-five years old.
The Republic was declared by the actions of Western bureaucrats to be a Republic pour rire, not a serious thing; and by this false and cruel assumption they killed Yuan Shih-kai. If that epitaph is written on his political tombstone, it will be as full of blinding truth as is only possible with Last Things.
Furthermore, it is important to note that the situation is brought back by the Mandate of the 13th June to where it was on the 6th June, 1916, with the death of Yuan Shih-kai, and that a period of civil commotion seems inevitable. To the President: Our previous memorandum to Your Excellency must have received your attention.
With Yuan Shih-kai acknowledged as President by both the north and the south, by Peking and Nanking alike, "The Great Republic of China," as it is called by those who have been mainly instrumental in bringing it into being, appears to have established itself, or at least it enters upon the first definite stage of its existence.
The United States accorded formal recognition to the Republic on the election of the Speakers of the two Houses of Parliament: the other Treaty Powers delayed recognition until Yuan Shih-kai had been elected full President in October.
This "law" which was the first result of the coup d'état of 4th November, 1913, and designed to take the place of the Nanking Constitution is wholly illegal and disappeared with the death of Yuan Shih-kai. The Presidential Succession Law. This instrument, like the Constitutional Compact, was wholly illegal and drawn up to make Yuan Shih-kai dictator for life.
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