He had taken an active part in the making of the Revolution; had lived for years in constant danger of detection; and had escaped on more than one occasion by the skin of his teeth. He had seen comrades fall by the wayside; some, including his own brother, under the executioner's sword; some, scarcely more lucky, flung into old-world jails; in some, fear had tempered ambition, and others had dropped out through the wane of their enthusiasm for a cause so full of peril and apparently so unpromising of success.

But success came, and in rather a curious way. The revolutionaries, so soon as their preparations enabled them to come out into the open with a show of force, found everybody agreeing with them. Of course, all was not well with

VOL. COXIX.-NO. MCCCXXV.

the country; a new era had arrived; every patriot must strive with all his might to raise the country to her proper place in the world; there should be no unnecessary bloodshed; all must put their backs to the wheel of progress, and so on. A few leaders felt that even the throne should be retained, that reform could very well proceed under its ægis, and that more stability would thus be attained. But they were in a minority, and the dynasty, accepting the general verdict, retired.

There was a period of reshuffling while the universal law of the strong and the weak asserted itself. The men with real force behind them-that is, with troops-became authority. Our politician was one of them; he was a military officer with a command in his

M

own province; and he soon had therein a satrapy all his

own.

But not for long. The Party to which he belonged, the men who did the spade work and made the Revolution possible, sent out a call to arms to down the autocrat at Peking, the throne's successor. He was one of the few who responded. The movement failed, and he escaped abroad. Followed a couple of years of exile, of propaganda and organisation. Then the autocrat's necessities, his fears for the future, led him to a step that played directly into their hands. He had crushed opposition and asserted his authority throughout the length and breadth of the land, but in doing so he had to be ruthless, and made many bitter enemies. He was, in fact, "riding the tiger." What would happen to him when he got off or was pushed off? The only remedy was to change from President to Emperor; that would be the only effective act of indemnity; he would be sacrosanct, and his successor would be his son. He tried it, and lost his life in the ensuing storm.

The reshuffling in our politician's province was this time complicated by a new factor, the presence in the province of a southern army which had come there to drive out the autocrat's troops. These latter, on their master's death, had readily withdrawn to their more important sphere elsewhere.

But the southern army had not only remained, but forthwith set about to consolidate their position and bring the province under their domination. From it they hoped to replenish their war-chest, and further, its control by them would constitute a big factor in the next round of the political struggle.

The purely provincial armies, however, their allies in the late movement, were still in existence. Their leaders expected the out-province men to withdraw and leave the province to them. To them provincial self-determination was not a matter to be argued about; it was an axiom. By it the administration of the province belonged to them, and the deployment of its strength in the next struggle was theirs to decide.

The tension culminated in hostilities; the capital fell to the provincial leaders, and the alien Governor was slain, but the out-province men were discomforted rather than actually defeated. They saw, however, that things had gone too far. If they were really to dominate the province by force they would have to bring up heavy reinforcements and fight a protracted campaign, the issue of which, moreover, might well be doubtful. They bethought themselves of our politician. He was a native of the province; he had come back with a command in their army, and they had given him back his old satrapy; he had shown