Two movements were started at once:  one to raise a National Salvation Fund to be applied towards strengthening the nation in any way the government might decide; the other, to boycott all Japanese articles of commerce.  Both soon attained formidable proportions.  The nation became deeply and fervently interested in the double-idea; and had Yuan Shih-kai possessed true political vision there is little doubt that by responding to this national call he might have ultimately been borne to the highest pinnacles of his ambitions without effort on his part.  His oldest enemies now openly declared that henceforth he had only to work honourably and whole-heartedly in the nation’s interest to find them supporting him, and to have every black mark set against his name wiped out.

In these circumstances what did he do?  His actions form one of the most incredible and, let it be said, contemptible chapters of contemporary history.

In dealing with the origins of the Twenty-one Demands we have already discussed the hints the Japan Representative had officially made when presenting his now famous Memorandum.  Briefly Yuan Shih-kai had been told in so many words that since he was already autocrat of all the Chinese, he had only to endorse the principle of Japanese guidance in his administration to find that his Throne would be as good as publicly and solidly established.  Being saturated with the doleful diplomacy of Korea, and seeing in these proposals a mere trap, Yuan Shih-kai, as we have shown, had drawn back in apparent alarm.  Nevertheless the words spoken had sunk in deep, for the simple and excellent reason that ever since the coup d’etat of the 4th November, 1913, the necessity of “consolidating” his position by something more permanent than a display of armed force had been a daily subject of conversation in the bosom of his family.  The problem, as this misguided man saw it, was simply by means of an unrivalled display of cunning to profit by the Japanese suggestion, and at the same time to leave the Japanese in the lurch.

His eldest son, an individual of whom it has been said that he had absorbed every theory his foreign teachers had taught him without being capable of applying a single one, was the leader in this family intrigue.  The unhappy victim of a brutal attempt to kill him during the Revolution, this eldest son had been for years semi-paralyzed:  but brooding over his disaster had only fortified in him the resolve to succeed his father as legitimate Heir.  Having saturated himself in Napoleonic literature, and being fully aware of how far a bold leader can go in times of emergency, he daily preached to his father the necessity of plucking the pear as soon as it was ripe.  The older man, being more skilled and more cautious in statecraft than this youthful visionary, purposely rejected the idea so long as its execution seemed to him premature.  But at last the point was reached when he was persuaded to give the monarchy advocates the free hand they solicited, being largely helped to this decision by the argument that almost anything in China could be accomplished under cover of the war,—­so long as vested foreign interests were not jeopardized.