March his opponents had become so many and so active that his remaining friends advised him to resign the presidency and retire into private life. A month later he had been denounced as a usurper in nearly every province by the very men who had " elected " him to the throne in Nov., and even at Peking there were but few to do him reverence. Nevertheless he declined to resign the presidency, and attempted a compromise by issuing a mandate (April 22), which transferred all civil authority to a reorganized Cabinet under the premiership of Tuan Chi-jui, an able and ambitious official, who had first achieved distinction, as Yuan's Minister of War, by suppressing Sun Yat-sen's revolu- tion in 1913. In order to placate the Cantonese and other dis- affected elements in the South, the President announced his intention of reintroducing parliamentary government without delay. But the Kuo Min-tang Radical leaders were not disposed to come to terms with Peking ; the absence of any effective author- ity at the capital merely served to stimulate new ambitions and create new causes of conflict amongst the political factions. The Kuo Min-tang, repudiating Yuan Shih-k'ai, therefore proclaimed the establishment of a new provisional Government at Canton and elected the Vice-President Li Yuan-hung to the presidency. Peking was now confronted with a renewal of civil war and by a situation which Yuan's persistence in retaining office rendered peculiarly difficult. But at this juncture Yuan died, worn out by an illness which chagrin had aggravated, and Li Yuan-hung duly succeeded to the presidency.
It soon became apparent that with Yuan Shih-k'ai had passed the only hope of restoring a strong central Government in China. Had he lived and succeeded in restoring law and order, he might also have succeeded in turning to his country's permanent ad- vantage the favourable economic situation in which the European War had placed it. But with his death the affairs of the nation became once more involved in a chaotic confusion of personal ambitions and political rivalries, and the functions of Govern- ment were rapidly transferred from the civil to the military organization. At the date of Yuan's death, the fiscal relations between Peking and the provinces which he had begun to re- organize in 1914, had completely collapsed, as the result of the new insurrectionary movement; the central Government was confronted by an empty treasury and without means of replenish- ing it, other than foreign loans. The Government banks at Peking had suspended specie payments in May 1916 and the military governors of the northern provinces, on whose support the administration depended, were loudly clamouring for money wherewith to pacify their unpaid troops. Tuan Chi-jui, as premier of the new Cabinet, endeavoured to disarm the opposi- tion of the Southerners and to secure support for the metropolitan administration, by convening the Parliament which Yuan had broken up in 1913, to meet at the capital on Aug. i. At the same time he sought to win over the most influential of the Cantonese leaders, Tang Shao-yi (prominent before the revolution as a metropolitan official and protege of Yuan Shih-k'ai), by offering him the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. But Tang Shao-yi and his colleagues of the Canton provisional Government showed no desire for unity; on the contrary, denouncing the Peking administration as " militarists " and monarchists in disguise, they professed to insist upon the immediate restoration of the provisional con- stitution adopted by the revolutionary leaders at Nanking in 1911. Subsequent events proved clearly that no devotion to any political principle lay behind their factions, and that the central Government could never have disarmed their opposition by granting the Nanking, or any other, constitution. The nation was doomed to civil strife by reason of rivalries that were, and still are, personal and predatory, and which only lawfully con- stituted authority, backed by disciplined forces, could ever over- come. At the opening of Parliament on Aug. i, two facts were speedily made manifest: firstly, that the Kuo Min-tang's repu- diation of Peking's authority had not been inspired solely by Yuan Shih-k'ai's attempt to restore the monarchy and would not end with it; secondly, that the existence and proceedings of Parliament, no matter under what constitution convened, were completely at the mercy of the military governors. One
of the first steps taken by Gen. Li Yuan-hung, as President of the republic, was to call a meeting of generals and to inform them that the country's destinies lay in their hands. Thenceforward the northern military governors, led by the premier Tuan Chi-jui, became the dominant factor of the situation. At the outset they were frankly opposed to the revival of the Nanking constitution and to the reassembling of the Parliament of 1913 ; while the navy, with its headquarters at Shanghai, was equally decided in its refusal to acknowledge the authority of Peking until Parliament had resumed its functions. Finally, a compromise was reached by the formation of a new Cabinet wherein the South was repre- sented. Parliament, in which the Kuo Min-tang party pre- dominated, declared its intention of adhering to the Nanking provisional constitution, pending the completion of a new and permanent instrument, for the preparation of which a special drafting committee was appointed. But it was not long before the military governors made it plain that, while they might per- mit the parliamentarians to debate their theories of government, its practice would continue to be determined by their own neces- sities, and that the chief problem with which the Cabinet would henceforth have to grapple, lay in the provision of funds for the maintenance of their uncontrolled and uncontrollable armies. After the passing of Yuan Shih-k'ai the history of the Chinese Government became a series of expedients and experiments in- tended to provide a temporary solution of this problem, all of which tended to aggravate its difficulty.
At the time of his " election " to the throne, in Nov. 1915, Yuan Shih-k'ai had made certain tentative overtures through the legations at Peking, with a view to China's abandonment of neutrality and her espousal of the cause of the Allies. By the adoption of this course he hoped not only to obtain the financial relief which he required, but to make provision for assistance in the future against the policy of encroachment displayed by Japan in the "21 Demands." But he was compelled to abandon negotiations to this end, because of the troubles that began to press upon him and because of the Japanese Government's un- concealed opposition to the proposal. After his death, however, the chief reason for this opposition was removed and in the winter of 1916, the question of China's joining the Allies came to be seriously considered by Tuan Chi-jui's Cabinet. The premier and most of his colleagues were anxious to take this step, because it offered an opportunity of suspending the Boxer indemnity payments and of securing Chinese representation at the Peace Conference at the close of the war. But amongst the older officials, there were some (including the President) who, greatly influenced by the activities of German agents and their lavish propaganda, preferred a policy of passive neutrality. Opinion was therefore divided and before the question was finally settled (March n) by a decisive vote of both Houses of Parliament, it had become inextricably involved in the dissensions and intrigues of the rival political factions at the capital, and had led to an open breach between the Premier and the President. On Feb. 4 the U.S. minister at Peking invited the Chinese Government to follow the example of the United States by formally protesting against Germany's submarine campaign and by severing diplo- matic relations; on the 9th, the Chinese Foreign Office conveyed an intimation to the German minister in the sense required. The premier's party were now for immediate action, but their policy was opposed and denounced by the German-subsidized section of the press and by the President's party in Parliament, advocating cautious delay. On Feb. 28, the Allied ministers at Peking, by a joint memorandum, notified the Chinese Govern- ment that if diplomatic relations with Germany were severed, the Powers would suspend the Boxer indemnity payments and consent to a revision of the Chinese customs tariff. The premier, after consulting his supporters at Peking and in the provinces, decided to act upon this advice and to instruct the provincial authorities accordingly. The President's refusal to confirm these instructions led to a ministerial crisis; eventually, after the premier had tendered his resignation, the President gave way. Tuan Chi-jui's policy having been endorsed by Parliament, relations with Germany were severed on March 14 1917; on the
