Meantime over across the way the shells were falling into the capital of Wuchang. The air was rent again and again by the sharp booming of the Imperial big guns on Coffin Hill. Men came and went, looked down at the {147} pools of human blood that were swelling the rivers of blood through which China has yet to pass before this Revolution ends. The river was deserted. If a sampan ventured out into the stream rifles were set to work, and a hasty retreat was made. The people were downcast. And this young Chinese, sent specially from General Li, who called upon me before I was dressed, had come asking whether I could not send a message from Li Yuan Hung to the world. "We don't want to fight any more!" he excitedly exclaimed. "General Li is genuinely anxious that peace should be declared, that slaughter on this wholesale scale should be stopped forthwith. Although this reverse has overcome the Revolutionary Army, our cause on the field is not by any means lost. Even if we have lost Hanyang, it does not follow that our fighting strength is gone, and if it becomes necessary General Li will alter the base of fighting operations, a scheme which the Imperialists had under consideration before their victory yesterday. None were more surprised than the Imperialists themselves when they were able to march up Hanyang Hill without having to fire a shot. But the fact that they are in possession of Hanyang does not necessarily mean that the military conquest is entirely won, for if needs be we shall be able continually to augment our army from other provinces until such time as in the very nature of things the Imperial Army will have been weeded out, man for man, or two to one, or three, or four if necessary." I was sorry I was unable to help him. I learned subsequently that, just an hour or so before Hanyang actually changed hands, Yuan Shih K'ai wired from Peking to the British Acting Consul-General here, asking him to inform General Li that he was anxious to hear what terms he proposed that peace might be established. This was just at the moment that Hanyang was passing. {148} What was to be the outcome of this Hunan dissension any one who knew the Hunanese would not be inclined to say offhand, but the fact that there has always been some little contempt mutually between the Hupehese and the Hunanese probably magnified the dissension in the military that occurred. One of the first arts of warfare is to cut off the pursuers. Now, when the Hunan men were in the city of Hanyang the Friday previous there was a little teashop squabble between a couple of dozen men, the Hupeh men being accused of flinching the hard graft of the front line. To this squabble is traced directly the capture of Hanyang by the enemy. "We are always sent to the front," said the Hunanese; "we are getting less pay, doing more work, suffering heavier losses in our ranks."