Nov. 15.
Ir is impossible to read unmoved the impassioned appeal of Dr. Wa Ting-fang and Mr. Wen Tsung-yao "to our foreign friends". There is no foreigner in China that will not endorse the indictment of the Manchu administration, or deny the justice of the plea that the revolutionaries "have controlled the forces for evil in © manner which should characterize this revolution as the least sanguinary in the history of the world, when the size of the country and nature of the masses are taken into consideration." Moreover, the extraordinary sympathy of one district for an-the united expression of popular feeling evidenced in the quiet secession of successive cities, are things to wonder at. But the point at which doubt has arisen in the minds of onlookers is this: that unanimity in opposition and unanimity when the same parties are in control are two different things. Hitherto the mere continued existence of the de jure Manchu Government has served to keep their antagonists in line. But! without particularizing we know that there are already diverse currents of opinion in the revolutionary ranks, small perhaps at first, yet, like the refractions of the aimosphere upon the apparent movement of a star, growing over more cult to computate as the line of ion extends. What these diversities may become when the binding force of a common opposition has been removed by the expulsion of the Manchu dynasty it is impossible tell. It is for this reason, the dread and impossibility of predicting what may come after, that some of the best friends of China, of those who sympathize heart and soul with the revolutionary crusade against corruption and barbarism, are urging them to prefer the centralized and centralizing medium of a constitutional monarchy, to the uncertain and capricious methods of republicanism. We have no wish, as the phrase goes, to " write down" the: volutionary cause. Far from it. We plead, andre not alone in 80 pleading, for the quickest and most permanent welfare of Chins. At least the ples may have this effect, that the emphasis laid on 8 in individuals, to prove Cassandrs wrong. Meanwhile, to quote from "An open Letter" the foreign. Powers stand, not hammering, but waiting at the doors to see what their opening will disclose, and their attitude is one of friendship.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.