were allowed to do no work, were useful in running backwards and forwards between the Legations and the Presidential headquarters and in making each Power suppose that its influence was of increasing importance.  It was made abundantly clear that in Yuan Shih-kai’s estimation the Legations played in international politics much the same role that provincial capitals did in domestic politics:  so long as you bound both to benevolent neutrality the main problem—­the consolidation of dictatorial power—­could be pushed on with as you wished.  Money, however, remained utterly lacking and a new twenty-five million sterling loan was spoken of as inevitable—­the accumulated deficit in 1914 being alone estimated at thirty-eight million pounds.  But although this financial dearth was annoying, Chinese resources were sufficient to allow the account to be carried on from day to day.  Some progress was made in railways, building concessions being liberally granted to foreign corporations, this policy having received a great impetus from the manner in which Dr. Sun Yat Sen had boomed the necessity for better communications during the short time he had ruled at a National Railway Bureau in Shanghai, an office from which he had been relieved in 1913 on it being discovered that he was secretly indenting for quick-firing guns.  Certain questions proved annoying and insoluble, for instance the Tibetan question concerning which England was very resolute, as well as the perpetual risings in Inner Mongolia, a region so close to Peking that constant concentrations of troops were necessary.  But on the whole as time went on there was increasing indifference both among the Foreign Powers and Chinese for the extraordinary state of affairs which had been allowed to grow up.

There was one notable exception, however, Japan.  Never relaxing her grip on a complicated problem, watchful and active, where others were indifferent and slothful, Japan bided her time.  Knowing that the hour had almost arrived when it would be possible to strike, Japan was vastly active behind the scenes in China long before the outbreak of the European war gave her the longed for opportunity; and largely because of her the pear, which seemed already almost ripe, finally withered on the tree.

CHAPTER V

THE FACTOR OF JAPAN

(From the outbreak op the world-war, 1st august, 1914, to the filing op the twenty-one demands, 18th January, 1915)