[Illustration: An Encampment of "The Punitive Expedition" of 1910 on the Upper Yangtsze.
_By courtesy of Major Isaac Newell, U.S. Military Attaché_.]
[Illustration: Revival of the Imperialistic Worship of Heaven by Yuan Shih-kai in 1914: Scene on the Altar of Heaven, with Sacrificial Officers clothed in costumes dating from 2,000 years ago.]
[Illustration: A Manchu Country Fair: The figures in the foreground are all Manchu women and girls.]
[Illustration: A Manchu Woman grinding Grain.]
It was on this astounding basis--by means of an organized revolt--that the Central Government was reorganized; and every act that followed bears the mark of its tainted parentage. Accepting readily as his Ministers in the more unimportant government Departments the nominees of the Southern Confederacy (which was now formally dissolved), Yuan Shih-kai was careful to reserve for his own men everything that concerned the control of the army and the police, as well as the all-important ministry of finance. The framework having been thus erected, attention was almost immediately concentrated on the problem of finding money, an amazing matter which would weary the stoutest reader if given in all its detail but which being part and parcel of the general problem must be referred to.
Certain essential features can be very rapidly exposed. We have already made clear the purely economic nature of the forces which had sapped the foundations of Chinese society. Primarily it had been the disastrous nature of Chinese gold-indebtedness which had given the new ideas the force they required to work their will on the nation. And just because the question of this gold-indebtedness had become so serious and such a drain on the nation, some months before the outbreak of the Revolution an arrangement had been entered into with the bankers of four nations for a Currency Loan of £10,000,000 with which to make an organized effort to re-establish internal credit. But this loan had never actually been floated, as a six months' safety clause had permitted a delay during which the Revolution had come. It was therefore necessary to begin the negotiations anew; and as the rich prizes to be won in the Chinese lottery had attracted general attention in the European financial world through the advertisement which the Revolution had given the country, a host of alternative loan proposals now lay at the disposal of Peking.