Yuan, under certain foreign advice, planned to throw a bridge across the Yangtze River at Hankau, and get his railway down into the heart of the southern rebel provinces. He believed in quick facilities for throwing his modern troops against uprisings, for his railway from Peking to Hankau had won him the present turn in the tide of affairs by enabling him to flank the long rebel lines. Oh! at this time, some cried, for an emperor warrior of the real Chinese, a descendant of the Mings; a descendant of the house of Confucius (the Duke Kungs); or a Washington-like president of a Chinese republic, who could get foreign loans. This was the cry that was arising against the return of the Manchu ghost, and the ominous shadow of a dictator. However, something had been won. The agitation and the battles had taught the sweet themes of deathless liberty and a new Chinese nationalism to thousands who had been supine, provincial, or anarchistic in their despair. It was recalled that Tau Sze Tung, the reformer and son of a Hupeh governor, who was beheaded in 1898, said on his way to the place of execution: “Martyrdom must always precede revolution; shall I not be the first martyr?” Liberty is never defeated, for each time she falls she makes her conqueror concede something, for she only falls to her knees and rises again. The reactionary empress dowager, Tse Hsi, after her victory in 1898, conceded reforms from 1900 to 1908, and it would be so with her successors, perhaps, after this lesson of protest. A plan was laid by some foreign bankers, and some Chinese, that if the republican government was not a success, a direct descendant of Confucius, one Kung, an American Presbyterian Christian of Shangtung province, would be backed for the throne in the hope that the Chinese race would flock to his banner. On November 28th, 29th and 30th, the rebels, under Generals Hsu and Ling, made a master effort on their right wing, for which purpose they had weakened their left wing, allowing the two Hankau cities to go. The Canton bomb throwing levies and artillerymen went into battle singing this new hymn to Liberty, which is certainly rugged poetry of merit: “Freedom will work on this earth, Great as a giant rising to the skies, Come, Liberty, because of the black hell of our slavery, Come enlighten us with a ray of thy sun. “Behold the woes of our fatherland. Other men are becoming all kings. Can we forget what our people are suffering? China the Great is as an immense desert. “We are working to open a new age in China; All real men are calling for a new heaven and a new earth. May the soul of the people rise as high as Kwangtung’s highest peak (Nan Mountain); Spirit of Freedom, lead, protect us.”