hung, as Vice-President, matically became President of China, Tuan Chi-jui became Pre-jor, Immediately, the Kuomintang members rushed to Peking. The state of the nation. The Canton country anticipated an immediate return to parliamentary—gover ment. Li Yuan-hung however was faced with an empty treasury and 'a disorganized country, Yuan Shi kai's monarchy movement—hac practically disrupted China, Conditions were hopeless. The foreign Powers, faced with a war in Europe, were worried over the possible of: fects of China's ion on the! general _internatio situation, Military commanders, who had been feathering their own nests, did not desire a return to constitutional methods and to a strong central government They wanted the chaos to continue because out of it they were making huge profits In this crisis, Parliament reassembled and struggle commenced between the Kuomintang and the Chinputang for mi The former insistes upon a government adhering strictly to the letter of the pro. visional constitution, while the Intter favoured an' opportunistic course. Li Yuan-hung tried to straddle between the two partie and to govern as best he might in the midst of confusion and chaos which he could not end, "Miltary men, like Chang Hsun, controlling important centres of the country, camping on such a railway as the Tientsin-Pukow line, utilizing the telegraph wires to send peremptory structions to the President, overawed Peking and all that ft contained, And in the palace Peking, lived and grew the "Boy" Emperor, to whom many of the military men looked as their. real roler and in whom they were begining to hope for a solution, China and the Xities China's entrance into the war on side of the Allies was the crowning achievement of the year 1917, and probably the greatest mistake: that China made in her Republican history, both from the Chinese and the foreign standpoint. Dr. Paul Reinsch, who was American Minister in Peking at the time, was largely responsible for this event, as he arranged for a series of com-manications between China and the superiority' of Allied to German diplomacy. To Li Yuan-hung, the step probably meant the arrangement of huge loans which would skive the Central Government an op Portunity to unify the country, concentrate its powers and sway of chaos. To the mil who had to be converted, it meant something quite different: it meant increased armies and more money, but it is very doubtful if even one of them ever expected to do. any fighting. And in the end, all tha there was to be made out of the ation was made by the militarists and a group of extraordinarily politicians, we we handled the situation that Chino entered upon a hey-day of unsecured, unimaginable foreign loans. One need only mark the harm the step China it definitely set of the end of the e's extraordinary position ina and strengthened all optional movements to him. China's entrance in the Great War did in that respect for China what Italy's entrance into the Crimean War did for Austria in Italy.
The Kuomintang was from the first opposed to China's participation im the war, not because it was pro-German, which is absurd, but. because it feared the effect of the! war upon the nation's militaris Liang Chi-chao was strongly in favour of the proposal and he was
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.