There are two things that the writer believes and prays for, viz.: that China will remain a republic, and will become a republic based on the worship of Christ and the study of the Christian’s Bible. Such a wonderful nation of four hundred millions, preserved from the immemorial past as one people, must have been preserved for some providential purpose, to put irresistible might behind certain altruistic world ideas. Are those ideas the giving of a truer republicanism, and a more unselfish Christianity than we have exemplified, to mankind? Japan made one irremediable and lamentable mistake; she has ignored the fact that the strength of the West is not in fleets, but in Bible knowledge, certain trusts and occasional wars notwithstanding. It will be remembered that the secretary of the Board of Rites, Wang Chao, recommended to the reform emperor, Kwang Hsu, in 1898, that Christianity should be named as the state religion. President Sun and General Li of the republicans are, as I have said before, a Congregationalist and an Episcopalian. As the friendly note from the six powers to the imperialists and revolutionists at Shanghai was, at America’s and Britain’s suggestion, identical, it was virtually a tentative recognition by the powers of the belligerents, which happy result the latter had been trying to obtain at Minister Wu’s urgency for over two months. Yuan threatened to fight if a republic was insisted on, and he seized a great part of the Manchu hoards at Peking and Tientsin, under the name of a forced loan. He needed two million dollars a month to pay the Manchu and northern bannermen. Four of the powers were in favor of lending Yuan money, but the rebels said, if you don’t also lend us money, we will boycott your trade in the central and southern provinces, and you know that most of the foreign trade emanates from Southern China, that is, your tea and silk come from that section, and your exports go there in exchange. If you want to know what a trade boycott by us means, ask the Japanese, who will recall the “Tatsu Maru” incident. The rebels also threatened that if loans were made by foreigners to the imperialists, and the rebels were successful, the latter would repudiate these loans. This was the most brilliant move to date of the republican diplomacy. The rebels now made a surprising and broad-minded move. They wanted to save bloodshed. They knew that a Paul converted had been made out of a stubborn Saul unconverted; that some reformers were in their day stanch “standpat machine” men! They offered Yuan the presidency of a republic, with Sunyacius as vice-president possibly, and Wu as a possible foreign minister, until real elective assemblies could form parties, and elect their nominees. Yuan’s emissary at the Shanghai Conference, Tang Shao Yi, was impressed with the fact that Yuan and others in North China had no idea how strongly the republican idea had seized on the rebel provinces.