Nanking, so as to succor redoubtable General Chang the Second at Nanking, and enable him to again occupy Tiger fort. General Feng came over from Hankau to advise Chang. The plan was, by taking back the Hankau cities and Nanking, to turn both the left and right flanks of the revolutionists, rush their capital of Wuchang, and crumple up the rebellion in Shanghai. Everything in equipment, transportation, foreign men, money and artillery favored the imperialists. Everything in daring and enthusiasm favored the rebels, whose American-trained students recited the dictum of Herodotus on republicanism: “The Athenians, when governed by tyrants, were superior in war to none of their neighbors, but when freed from tyrants, became by far the first. This then shows that as long as they were oppressed they purposely acted as cowards, as laboring for a master, but when they were free every man was zealous to labor for the State.” There was one thing the rebels were weak or uncertain in. If they destroyed China’s religion of aristocracy and king worship, what would they give in its place? Would they give Christianity (their leaders, Doctor Sun and General Li, being Christians), and a permanent satisfaction with the rule of a native president and congress over twenty-one provincial presidents and assemblies? It was a mighty task,--the greatest the world has known,--and few of the old viceroys and Manchuized Chinese literati of the Hanlin were at heart prepared for its radical solution. True, the rebels could staff the twenty-one provinces with advanced Kwangtung, Szechuen, Hupeh, Hunan and Kiangsu province men, but that was not republican home rule.