July 14.
In our previous article we showed that the men who had forced President Tui Yuan-hung out of office, hoping to put General Tsao Kun in his place, had completely defeated their own ends by so smashing up all the machinery of succession and government, that there is not only no government left, but no conceivable means of creating one legally. Nothing can emerge from this scene of wreckage that could offer the slightest legal pretensions on which to claim support within the country or recognition without. It is plain thatthe conspirators feel the force of public opinion dead against them, or they would have put Tsao Kun in office three weeks ago as they meant to do. But this they have "not dared to do and every day's delay makes the consummation of their hopes more impossible. Weak and unrepresented in the affairs of government as are the Chinese people, they have somehow managed to make it clear to the Chihli schemers that a filibustering government founded on chicanery and brute force—and no other kind of government could now be set up in Peking—will not be endured. That is something for the foreign Powers to remember, when they try ton hut their eyes to what is passing outside the walls of Legation Quarter and to pretend that any act of taking notice on their part would be an act of intervention.
The true view, that which alone is consistent with the facts of the case and the future welfare of China, is that the conspirators of the Chihli party have unintentionally offered to the Powers an unequalled opportunity for putting into effect a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.