Evening star., 1914-06-07
CHINA'S PRESIDENT
Continued from page 5

coachman; TODAY he is military dictator of a
large slice of territory north of the Yangtze,
and his army of Huns is still intact and
under his absolute command.
"To complete the picture OF the men who
are ruling China today you have only to
add Ii Yuan Hung, the Vice President, and
Yuan's only rival left for the dictatorship.
But General Ii has left Wuchang, the
strategic military base of China, where he
was a power for at least the nearest approx
nation of republican government of all
Yuan's associates. He is now distinctly
out of his element in Peking, and Yuan
has meanwhile replaced him with his Min
lister of War, plant tool of the opportunist
faction. This is the man, Tuan Chi Jul,
who sent the army of gray wolves against
the revolutionary Wuchang three years ago
in the name of his Manchu masters. He
was whipped then; but he is our master
now, and now again the last man out OF
Picking whom we believed to have shadow
of sympathy with the new order has been
stripped of his prestige and drawn deeper
than ever into the black reaction against
us in Peking.'
nR. SUN leaned forward in his chair.
- "There are difficulties" he continued
earnestly, "heartbreaking difficulties, in
the way of our getting back to China; but
we are resolved to face them. From day
to day we know the worst from Peking.
We are not deceiving ourselves with any
false hopes or even with any false security
as to our personal lives We are waiting,
and meanwhile we are ceaselessly at work.
Il may not tell you what our plans are;
but can tell you this: Not our own people,
not Our own mistakes, drove us from China,
but foreign money power, deliberately en-
ployed for the breakup of our country. The
foreign bankers of the five-power group
held the balance of power between the
North and the South for three years. When
we were in power they starved us of the
credit, except on the most humlllatlng
terms, which they alone could advance us.
If China had been left alone, we of the
South could have settled with the reaction
ary old women of the North long ago.
Last years personal loan of one hundred
and twenty-five million dollars to Yuan
Shi-kai, fought to the last ditch by every
constitutional party in China, simply put
a club into the hands of the North with which
they straightway smashed our cause. That
huge bribe, and that alone, is the reason
why we are where we are today.
"Well laid as these plans were, they have
brought nothing to China but anarchy,
into our hands Anarchy among the bankers
has burst asunder the fve-power group,
and has broken up for long time to come
their inplacable conspiracy against free
dom in China. Anarchy in every depart
ment, anarchy and stagnation in every
field of progress opened by the Revolution,
is spreading the conviction among the
Chinese people that the strong man now
master in Picking is only the weak tool of
the reaction he pretended to oppose. AL
ready our men are in every great city plan
ming the new uprising that Yuan Shi-kai
knows he cannot resist. The spirit of free
dom in China has tasted enough of success
to be aware of its unconquerable posi-
bilities. The tide of these possibilities is
with us, and when it rises again to food no
army of Northern mercenaries is going to
keep us from the mastery of China, and
no boycott of foreign bondholders is going
to turn aside the march of our nation to-
ward its new ideals of liberty and progress