HOW YUAN ROSE.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1916, Page 8

HOW YUAN ROSE.

FROM HUMBLE BIRTH TO GUIDE j THE EMPRESS DOWAGER. Yuan Shi Kai is the outstanding man in China who understands the value of force. It may be taken for granted that he has guaranteed himself a "safe army." Since his early days force has been his maxim and his stepping-stone. He was horn just over fifty-six years ago j in Honan, of humble parents. When , quite a young man in some obscure ! official job in the provinces he had the good fortune to attract the attention of the famous Chinese statesman, Li Hung Chang. Impressed by the youth's zeal and personality, Li made him his protege. Yuan was handsomely rewarded. He became Governor of Shantung in 1900. Foreigners will ever be grateful to him for the part lie played during the Boxer rising in that year. He would never ! support the movement, and he lent great j assistance to the harassed foreigners; J j and yet ho was astute enough not to ! quarrel with the Empress Dowager, who : was supposed to he the.inspirator of the | anti-foreign movement. It is recorded j of him that he invited six Boxer lenders I to a banquet in his yamen, and on their arrival he had their heads chopped off! The Empress Dowager, chastened by the lessons of the Boxer rising, saw that Yuan's attitude had been her salvation, and ne became her right-hand man. Honors were showered upon him. He succeeded Li Hung Chang as Viceroy of Cliihli in 1001. He was appointed junior guardian of the Heir Apparent; he received the Yellow Riding Jacket and later the Three-Eyed Peacock's Feather. And his official income was £20,000 a year, not to mention perquisites. In 1007 he became Foreign Minister, and in the following year his patron and the Empress Dowager and the unhappy, deposed Emperor, died. The latter's brother became Prince Regent, and the first tiling he did was to avenge his dead brother. He (iismisseu Yuan, who ,vas ordered Co vacate oil his appointments immediately and return to his native place "because of the rheumatism in his leg. Thus our clemency towards him is manifested," ran the Imperial edict. There was no commanding figure left iu Pekin, and, by the irony of Fate, two years afterwards the man who dismissed him had to recall Yuan to save the Manehu throne. The appeal was irresistible. Yuan got his "bad leg" put right, hurried from his quiet country place to Pekin, and in October, 1011, assumed control' of the Imperial Army and Navy Wiihin the next four months he was elected President of the I Chinese Republic, having made terms ' .with the revolutionaries and arranged the terms of abdication of the Manj'iu niters. Yuan had won through by his I powers of leadership, his military strength, and the foreign support, fin- ' ancial and otherwise, he could theref foro command.