Most ardent preparations for further fighting counterbalanced the peace suggestions. Was there to be any more fighting? Ah, who knew? It was not wise to talk of such things. All this was exceptionally difficult business that Chinese should fight Chinese. But who could bring forward any way out of it. No; from Mr. Wong Kai Wen there was no news to be got, but he let drop little things that led one immediately to believe that Yuan's party were not in for talking peace. They had taken Hanyang, they would soon, so it appeared, have Wuchang, and that would make the Revolutionary cause lost altogether. This was the impression which the Imperial camp gave to me. Then I went over to the Revolutionary camp, finding that both factions had many palpable differences. To go into General Li Yuan Hung's offices was to enter a semi-Occidentalised yamen. The staff were dressed in European clothes, they had no queues, their hats were mostly American felts, they talked English more or less, many of them had been trained in American universities. They treated you in an Occidental manner, told you their plans frankly, and one could feel that they were to be believed. They knew and they confessed that the military cause here was gone, but when I questioned them as to the ultimate issue of the Revolution they proudly pointed to certain epochs of history in my own country and asked me whether I thought it possible that the country could ever be again what it had been. The anti-foreignism of the north and the massacring of the foreigners at {165} Sianfu in Shensi they deplored sincerely, and felt that it was in the banditti and the hooliganism in the Empire that they had a problem difficult of satisfactory solution.