The great revolution of October, 1911, did not drop as a bolt from a clear sky. The clouds had been gathering, though many at home and abroad did not, or would not see them. In September, 1911, the imperial viceroy of Canton, Chang Ming Chi, sent spies along the new Canton-Hongkong railway to apprehend smugglers of arms. In the same month troops under the command of Marshal Lung Chai Kwong, suddenly surrounded the office of the _Shat Pat Po_ newspaper, at Canton, and arrested several reformers. General Luk Wing Ting, of Kwangsi province, came down the Si Kiang (West River) in September, 1911, in the gunboat _Po Pik_ to Canton and took back with him from the Canton arsenal, machine guns and ammunition to attack the “anarchists”, as the Manchus persistently called all reformers. In the month previous, the Ministry of Posts and Communications at Peking stopped the use of private codes, so as to censor messages to the reformers. Several viceroys, in secret sympathy with the reformers, had as early as August, 1911, wired for gunboats, so as to disperse the fleet from the Yangtze basin, where the revolution was to strike, and the largest cruiser, the splendid _Hai Chi_, well-known in New York, these viceroys suggested should be sent to King George’s coronation review at Spithead. Even as far back as July, 1907, the Chinese government approached the powers, requesting that they make espionage on arms consigned to South China. Rather to our amusement, they used to arrive at Hongkong as boxed pipes, condensers, bar iron, crockery, etc.--anything but guns, but that was the humor of the freight classification which the shippers used! In December, 1906, the scholars of the middle class in Wuchow, Kwangsi province, at the head of navigation on the West River, decided to cut off their queues, and adopted khaki uniform, military drill and track races. They were independently preparing for strenuous times five years before the outbreak, and these boys were found in the first line of the attack in October, 1911, up at Hankau, led by the Chinese Colonel Wen, who had graduated from West Point Military Academy, in America, in 1909. In August, 1911, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation reported that a large part of its $9,000,000 gold note issue was being held, instead of circulated by the Chinese of Kwangtung and other southern provinces. This hoarding of safe securities always indicates lack of faith as to the business and political future.