The situation in the North has naturally developed since this message was written, but it is of importance as explaining the steps taken before the fight at Kaopeitien, Peking, July 13.
The Anfu Club is in a panic. It has only one reliance and that is the half pathetic, half terrible weakness of President Hsu Shih-chang. The military power upon which it counted for its defence against the wrath of the people, and for the maintenance of which it has pledged China to the tune of 400 millions, has failed it. The soldiers have shown in the crisis that they are of and for the Chinese people, that they are truer to their country than to their rice bowls. Tuan Chi-jui is humiliated. He thought himself the war god. He could not conceive that any Peiyang soldier would fail to spend to his call, and even the divisions for whom he sold his soul to Japan, whom he clothed, fed and{ armed with the proceeds of a Japanese loan, over whom he set Japanese trainers, have failed him. They too are unwilling to defend him against his enemies. His career dictator is finished.
The keystone of the Anfu arch has crumbled and unless compromise props it for a time it will fall with a crash such as China has never witnessed. Tuan has asked for sanctuary in the Legation Quarter. Yesterday Li Shih-hao suggested that he would be comfortable in the ex-German bank but the Legations think otherwise. Reluctantly the diplomats,—who: the frank and honest"? Marshal has hypnotized with his bored manner his apparently cynical indifference to power and pelf, admit, that in his latest move, in his coercion of the President, his sumption of control over all the garrison forces of Peking, his bold announcement of his determination to protect his anathematized disciples and "punish" the man who has been bold enough to raise his hand against them by putting all) his eggs in one basket—that by all this he has assumed a responsi lity which he must discharge himself.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.